Pathway to low-cost metallization of silicon solar cell through understanding of the silicon metal interface and plating chemistry

Metallization is crucial to silicon solar cell performance. It is the second most expensive process step in the fabrication of a solar cell. In order to reduce the cost of solar cell, the metallization cost has to be cut down by using less metal without compromising the efficiency. Screen-printing has been used in metallizing the commercial solar cell because of the high throughput and low cost at the expense of performance. However, because of the variability in the screen-printed gridlines, the amount of Ag metal used cannot be controlled. More so, the dependence of the contact resistance on doping necessitates the use of low sheet resistance emitters, which exacerbates losses in the blue response and hence the efficiency. To balance the contact resistance and improve blue response, several approaches have been undertaken including, use of Ag pastes incorporating nanoparticle glass frits that will not diffuse excessively into a lightly doped emitter, Ni plating on lightly doped emitter through SiNx dielectric plus NiSi formation followed by Cu and/or Ag plating, light induced plating (LIP) of Ag or Cu on fired through dielectric metal seed layers formed by aerosol or inkjet or screen-printing. All these approaches require excellent adhesion and gridline conductivity to minimize the total series resistance, which impedes the collection of electrons. This paper presents the issues and the pathway to achieving high efficiency using low cost metallization technology involving inkjet-printed Ag fine gridline having 38 μm width and 3 μm height fired through the SiNx followed by Ni and Cu plating. A comprehensive analysis of silicon/metal interface, using high precision microscopy, has shown that the investigated metallization technology is appropriate for the longevity of the device.