Silicon heterojunction interdigitated back-contact solar cells bonded to glass with efficiency > 21%

Previously, IMEC proposed the i(2)-module concept which allows to process silicon heterojunction interdigitated back-contact (SHJ-IBC) cells on thin ( < 50 mu m) Si wafers at module level. This concept includes the bonding of the thin wafer early on to the module cover glass, which delivers mechanical support to the wafer and thus significantly improves the production yield. In this work, we test silicone and ethylene vinyl acetate bonding agents and prove them to be resistant to all rear side processes, including wet and plasma processes. Moreover, a lift-off process using a sacrificial SiOx layer has been developed for emitter patterning to replace conventional lithography. The optimized process steps are demonstrated by the fabrication of SHJ-IBC cells on 6-inch 190 mu m-thick wafers. Efficiencies up to 22.6% have been achieved on reference freestanding wafers. Excellent V-oc of 734 my and J(sc) of 40.8 mA/cm(2) lead to an efficiency of 21.7% on silicone-bonded cells, where the high V-oc indicates the process compatibility of the bonding agent. The developments that enabled such achievements and the key factors that limit the device performance are discussed in this paper.The authors would like to thank the financial support of imec's industrial affiliation program for Si-PV. This work was also partially funded by Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences under project code: P115-15EE-01. The research has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreements no. 609788 (Cheetah), and also funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 657270. The authors gratefully acknowledge Joachim John for the spectral response measurements and Yiming Yang for the SEM measurements.energy & fuels; materials science, multidisciplinary; physics, applie