Easy-to-fabricate 20% efficient large-area silicon solar cells

Recently, an innovative silicon solar cell structure has been developed at ISFH which is capable of achieving very high cell efficiencies on industria l-size wafers with a simple photolithography-free processing sequence. As t he corresponding solar cells essentially rely on the application of oblique ly evaporated contacts they are denoted as OECO cells. In this paper the su ccessful up-scaling of the novel OECO process from 21% efficient 4cm(2) lab oratory devices to the fabrication of large-area (greater than or equal to 100cm(2)) silicon solar cells is described, and independently confirmed tot al area efficiencies of 20% are reported for 10 x 10cm(2) OECO-type solar c ells fabricated on p-type float-zone silicon. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V . All rights reserved.