Large-area metallisation wrap through solar cells using electroless plating

In this publication we present a realisation of a large-area metallisation wrap through (MWT) back-contact-solar cell with electroless-plated contacts. The MWT cell is a very promising back-contact solar-cell concept since the additional effort required to process MWT instead of conventional cells is limited to the formation of a small number of holes. In addition, the concept can easily be applied to very large area cells.We introduce a 9.8 cm×9.8 cm MWT solar cell, which reaches an efficiency of 16.1%. Up to this point cell performance is limited by local shunting, which results from non-optimal nickel sintering.