Production ready noval texture etching process for fabrication of single crystalline silicon solar cells

Abstract

We have very successfully developed a novel, IPA free chemical etching process for texturing single crystalline silicon substrates by employing polymer additives with aqueous KOH. In this paper we describe the successful implementation of this IPA free novel texturization process in our baseline single crystalline solar cell flow. The results have been validated with a number of repeated extended run production data. Solar cells fabricated with multiple wafer lots consistently exhibit cell efficiencies greater than 17.5%. It is found that surface texturing capability of this chemistry is slightly better than that of the established KOH/IPA process