SURFACE AND BULK-PASSIVATED LARGE-AREA MULTICRYSTALLINE SILICON SOLAR-CELLS

We have investigated the surface and bulk passivation technique on lar ge-area multicrystalline silicon solar cells, a large open-circuit vol tage has been obtained for cells oxidized to passivate the surface and hydrogen annealed after deposition of silicon nitride film on both su rfaces by plasma CVD method (P-SiN) to passivate the bulk. The texture surface like pyramid structure on multicrystalline silicon surface ha s been obtained uniformly using reactive ion etching (RIE) method. Com bining these RIE method and passivation schemes, the conversion effici ency of 17.1% is obtained on 15 cm x 15 cm multicrystalline silicon so lar cell. Phosphorus diffusion, BSF formation, passivation technique a nd contact metallization for low-cost process sequences are also descr ibed in this paper.