Investigation of selective emitter in single step diffusion process for plated Ni/Cu metallization crystalline silicon solar cells

In this study, our focus is prior to the single step selective emitter for the plated Ni/Cu solar cell. Here, the light induced plating (LIP) technology is used to fabricate the Cu plated solar cell. The purpose of using electroless Ni plating is to prevent the diffusion of Cu into Si and to improve adhesion on the Si substrate as a seed layer for better electrical quality of the solar cell. The characteristics of solar cells such as short-circuit current density have also been analyzed. Throughout the experiment, we have obtained a selective emitter cell of its conversion efficiency of 17.90%, fill factor of 75.14%, VOC of 614 mV and JSC of 38.8 mA/cm2, while the conversion efficiency of 17.13%, fill factor of 73.21%, VOC of 614 mV, JSC of 38.1 mA/cm2 are obtained for a non-selective emitter Ni/Cu solar cell. The efficiency of the selective emitter cell improves about 0.77% compared to that of the reference cell.