The performance of silicon solar cell with selective pillars fabricated by Cesium Chloride self-assembly lithography and UV-lithography

•Selective Si pillars solar cell is made by CsCl self-assembly and UV-lithography.•Si pillars are only made on active areas and electrode pattern are plain.•Selective pillars cell overcomes the problem of metal contacts on texture surface.•It has better spectral response for the wavelength from 400 to 1000 nm.•The PCE improves from 13.28% to 15.37% for the selective pillars texture.

The silicon solar cell with selective pillars is fabricated by Cesium Chloride (CsCl) self-assembly lithography and UV-lithography. This solar cell has pillars selectively in the active area (i.e. emitter exposed to light) while keeping electrode area plain to overcome the problem of metal contacts on pillars’ surface. CsCl self-assembly and dry etching are used to make silicon pillars only on the active silicon surface as antireflection layer for the solar cell. UV-lithography is used to provide the selective area for the silicon pillars fabrication and the pattern for electrode. Ti/Ag layer is deposited on the electrode pattern surface with the alignment shadow mask by thermal evaporation. The solar cell with selective pillars has the lower reflectivity below 5% in the spectral ranging from 400 to 1000 nm compared to the planar cell without antireflection coating, and it also has the better electrode contacts compared to the cell with pillars all over the entire front surface. The photovoltaic conversion efficiency (PCE) improves from 12.18% to 15.37% at the experiment condition.

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