PROGRESS IN A NOVEL HIGH-THROUGHPUT MECHANICAL TEXTURIZATION TECHNOLOGY FOR HIGHLY EFFICIENT MULTICRYSTALLINE SILICON SOLAR-CELLS

The technique to mechanically structure silicon for highly efficient m ulticrystalline silicon solar cells has been developed at the Universi ty of Konstanz over the last few years. In order to make this technolo gy suitable for a high-throughput industrial environment, a new textur ization tool - the structuring wheel - has been designed. An extensive tool wear study indicates that the structuring wheels presently appli ed in our high-throughput mechanical texturization technology may be u sed to V groove at least 1 million wafers with a single abrasive layer . This results in a cost for the texturization step of about 0.025US$ per wafer in a production scenario. First results from a simulation pr ogram to determine two- and three-dimensional optical carrier generati on profiles in textured silicon are given.