High-Efficiency Diamond Wire-Sawn mc-Si-Based PERC Solar Cells Textured by Atmospheric Pressure Dry Etching

In this paper, we present further results on the integration of a “black-silicon” texturing process on diamond-wire sawn multicrystalline silicon wafer, using atmospheric pressure dry texturing (ADE) in a passivated emitter and rear cell (PERC) solar cell architecture. Following on from our previous work on high-efficiency nanotextured solar cells, we present further optimization of our texturing process, resulting in the uniform formation of spherical caps-like surface morphology with low reflectivity and comparable reflection distribution to the wet-chemical acidic texture based on additives. First cell results show up to 19.8% conversion efficiency. Characterisation and analysis of the cells highlight current limitations and identify potential for improvement: optimization of the firing process and minimization the inherent bulk-related recombination losses in the mc-Si material, which is expected to lead to further gain in conversion efficiencies