PROGRESS IN PHOTOVOLTAICS: RESEARCH AND APPLICATIONS

Prog. Photovolt: Res. Appl. 2011; 19:275–279

Published online 19 July 2010 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/pip.1018

RESEARCH ARTICLE

High efficiency screen printed bifacial solar cells on

monocrystalline CZ silicon
L. Yang1*, Q.H. Ye1, A. Ebong2, W.T. Song3, G.J. Zhang3, J.X. Wang3 and Y. Ma3
1
Solar Energy Institute of the Physics Department, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, PR China
2
University Center of Excellence for Photovoltaic Research and Education, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Georgia Institute of Technology, 777 Atlantic Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332-0250, USA
3
Solarfun Co., Ltd, Linyang Road 666, Qidong, Jiangsu, China

ABSTRACT
We present industrialized bifacial solar cells on large area (149 cm2) 2 cm CZ monocrystalline silicon wafers processed
with industrially relevant techniques such as liquid source BBr3 and POCl3 open-tube furnace diffusions, plasma enhanced
chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) SiNx deposition, and screen printed contacts. The fundamental analysis of the paste
using at boron-diffused surface and the bifacial solar cell firing cycle has been investigated. The resulting solar cells have
front and rear efficiencies of 16.6 and 12.8%, respectively. The ratio of the rear JSC to front JSC is 76.8%. It increases the
bifacial power by 15.4% over a conventional solar cell at 20% of 1-sun rear illumination, which equals to the power
of a conventional solar cell with 19.2% efficiency. We also present a bifacial glass–glass photovoltaic (PV) module with
30 bifacial cells with the electrical characteristics. Copyright # 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
KEYWORDS
bifacial; boron diffusion; screen-printing
*Correspondence
L. Yang, Solar Energy Institute of the Physics Department, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, PR China.
E-mail: [email protected]

Received 22 December 2009; Revised 24 May 2010

1. INTRODUCTION Bifacial solar cell is of great interest because of the higher

efficiency potential and the need to improve solar cell power
The search for a continued reduction of the cost of generation.[7] The bifacial structure having metal gridlines
photovoltaic (PV) electricity has led to considerable effort on both surfaces can receive sunlight from both sides and
on the reduction of silicon (Si) consumption via the use of create under certain conditions 20% more power than the
thin Si wafers. Wafers below 180 mm in thickness single sided counterpart. An additional advantage of
introduce a number of challenges. Device efficiencies the bifacial solar cell over the conventional is the reduction
(Eff) become increasingly dependent on surface condition- in cell temperature due to the reduced heat absorption in
ing and passivation requiring surface engineering. In the absence of the Al back metallization. This is important
addition, during thin wafer large volume manufacturing in field operation of the module with bifacial cells, which
wafers become susceptible to warping and breakage during can run at lower temperature than the conventional modules,
both cell and module manufacturing.[1,2] To realize the and upholds higher maximum power.
theoretical efficiency limit of a silicon solar cell, the This work presents an industrialized low-cost screen-
backside aluminum must be replaced with dielectric and printed process that yields bifacial solar cells on CZ
local contacts.[3] To accomplish this, boron becomes an monocrystalline substrates (Figure 1). Progress on research
alternative material to provide the back surface field (BSF) has also been achieved in this area recently.[8,9] The
for p-type substrate and p-n junction on n-type silicon solar primary challenges associated with screen-printed CZ
cells.[4,5] Also, the bowing of the conventional full bifacial solar cells are the BBr3 boron diffusion, boron-
aluminum rear surface is the critical problem that needs to diffused surface passivation, and metallization. It is known
be solved.[6] The use of boron BSF can avoid the bowing that junction depth, surface carrier concentration, sheet
and set the stage for higher efficiency. resistance, and diffusion uniformity control the dark

Copyright ß 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 275

Screen printed high efficiency bifacial solar cells L. Yang et al.

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the bifacial solar cell with pþpnþ structure.

saturation current density J0 and the effective lifetime in Understanding the back and front conductor paste
silicon solar cells.[10] As part of this work boron diffusion properties and their interaction with the co-firing step is
conditions have been tailored in order to achieve critical critical to getting high quality screen-printed contacts. The
cell physical parameters necessary for bifacial operation. contact resistance at the front and rear must be low. Thus,
Furthermore, we have shown that plasma enhanced the use of an appropriate rear contact conductor paste and
chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) silicon nitride layer optimized firing cycle is critical to proper solar cell
can mask against cross-diffusion during the boron and operation.[14] To achieve this we used a co-firing condition
phosphorus diffusion processes. for conventional Al–BSF cells. Since aluminum surface for
a standard Al–BSF cell and the SiNx dielectric for the

2. EXPERIMENTAL
Table I. Processing sequence for bifacial solar cells.
We need to diffuse two different impurities phosphorus and Process Process description
boron into front and rear surface separately to achieve the sequence
bifacial solar cell pþpnþ or pþnnþ structure. Boron and
phosphorus diffusions were performed in a tube furnace I Substrate chemical polish/RCA standard clean
employing liquid sources: BBr3 liquid source for boron and II BBr3 boron diffusion (face to face)
POCl3 liquid source for phosphorous. To achieve III SiN deposition on boron-diffused side (pþ side)
comparable junction characteristics, boron diffusion in IV Alkaline texturing
Si requires much higher diffusion temperatures than V POCl3 diffusion (back to back)
phosphorus diffusion in Si.[11,12] As a means to assure VI SiN deposition on phosphorus-diffused
optimum boron and phosphorus diffusion conditions side (nþ side)
minimizing their impact on the post-diffusion wafer VII Screen-printing of AgAl paste on pþ surface
lifetime, we measured the effective minority carrier and drying
lifetime as a function of the excess minority carrier VIII Screen-printing of Ag paste on nþ surface
density Dn (at 1015 cm
3 injection level) using the quasi- IX Co-firing of the contacts
steady-state photoconductance (QSS-PC) technique.[13]
In this work, we used 200 mm thick 2 V cm p-type
Czochralski silicon wafers. After saw damage removal,
substrates were cleaned by standard ratio corporation of
America (RCA) clean. Next, boron diffusion was
performed in a conventional tube furnace using BBr3
liquid source at a set temperature of 1020 8C. This was
followed by the boron glass removal and deionized (DI)
water rinse before the PECVD SiNx anti-reflection coating
and masking layer was deposited; layer thickness was
optimized to guarantee the adequate masking of the
subsequent phosphorus diffusion. Afterwards, the front
side alkaline texturing was performed prior to phosphorus
diffusion using POCl3. The rest of the process steps are
outlined in Table I. The diffusion profiles were measured
using spreading resistance analysis (SRA) with 1 mm x-
step increments to understand the surface concentration Figure 2. Boron and phosphorus carrier concentrations deter-
and junction depths (Figure 2). mined by SRA.

276 Prog. Photovolt: Res. Appl. 2011; 19:275–279 ß 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/pip
L. Yang et al. Screen printed high efficiency bifacial solar cells

Figure 3. Comparison diagrams of the measured bifacial solar cell firing curve and the conventional Al–BSF solar cell at same firing
process condition. (a) Zooms into the firing peak temperature profile indicating the differences in temperature during the firing of the
bifacial and conventional cells fabricated in this study. (b) SEM image of the silver–aluminum paste at the boron-diffused silicon surface
after metal etching showing a large density of Ag–Si crystallites.

bifacial cell design have different heat absorption 3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
coefficients, the monofacial and bifacial solar cells will
experience different peak temperatures for the same set Figure 2 shows the boron and phosphorus diffusion profiles
points as shown in Figure 3. Silver–silicon island size and at different drive-in temperatures. The carrier concen-
distribution are heavily impacted by paste formulation and tration after the boron diffusion (drive-in at 1020 8C) was
the firing process and play a critical role in defining contact 6.5  1019 cm
3 and junction depth was 0.7 mm. The
resistance.[15,16] Figure 3b shows SEM surface image of junction depth for the phosphorus diffusion (driven-in at
the boron-diffused surface after contact formation and 950 8C) is 0.4 mm with a surface carrier concentration of
subsequent metallization etching displaying a high-density 2.0  1020 cm
3. We measured an implied Voc value of
of small silver–silicon islands. A high rear illumination fill 635 mV and effective lifetime (teff) of 45 ms after the
factor (FF) has been realized, although such high FF could diffusion steps.
also be a result of the lower short circuit current under rear The electrical parameters and I–V curves for the bifacial
illumination. solar cell are presented in Figure 4. Our fabricated bifacial

Figure 4. Front and rear electrical parameters and I–V curve of the bifacial solar cell, measured at UCEP, Georgia Institute of
Technology, under terrestrial standard testing conditions (STC).

Prog. Photovolt: Res. Appl. 2011; 19:275–279 ß 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 277
DOI: 10.1002/pip
Screen printed high efficiency bifacial solar cells L. Yang et al.

Figure 5. Front and rear internal quantum efficiency (IQE) and

reflectance of the bifacial solar cells.

solar cell on a 2 V cm substrate produced front and rear

energy conversion efficiencies of 16.6 and 12.8%,
respectively. The ratio of the rear JSC to front JSC is
76.8%. The conversion efficiency of the bifacial cell under
rear illumination is lower than the front because of lower
short circuit currents (JSC) because of a higher rear surface
reflectance (Figure 4). Recall that the silicon nitride
Figure 6. Appearance of the glass–glass, 30 bifacial cells PV
thickness was not optimized for ARC but tailored to mask
module fabricated for this study.
against phosphorus diffusion. Moreover, there is a 3%
more metal coverage on the back side than the front, which
adds to the total reflectance. Since upon rear illumination
the junction is far from the sunward side, minority carriers BSF structure. To realize the potential of the bifacial cell
generated near the rear of the device (blue and green with higher Voc, more work is needed to understand how to
spectral response) require long diffusion lengths in order to tailor the boron diffusion profile and its associated SiNx
contribute to the short circuit current. In summary, the surface passivation to decrease the back saturation current
effective minority carrier lifetime, non-optimum silicon (Job).
nitride layer, and 3% more metal coverage on the rear side Reflectance and internal quantum efficiency (IQE)
are all responsible for the significantly lower rear curves under front and rear illuminations are presented in
illumination JSC. The shunt resistance for both front and Figure 5. The difference between front and rear IQE in the
rear illuminations is high, indicative of the efficacy of the short wavelength region is mainly due to the effect of bulk
silicon nitride masking during phosphorus diffusion. lifetime on minority carriers generated away from the
We have sacrificed the rear shading area by using the collecting junction. As stated, rear reflectance is higher
silver–aluminum paste for screen-printing the dilated than that of the front side due to a 3% higher metal
fingers (final finger width is around 130 mm after firing coverage as well as a non-optimized rear silicon nitride
process) at the pþ surface to balance the contact resistance thickness on a planar rear surface.
and gridline resistance. The open circuit voltage (Figure 4) Thirty bifacial solar cells were used to fabricate a glass–
is consistent with 45-V/sq emitter in conjunction with Al– glass module. Table II shows the electrical parameters of
the bifacial PV module, and the appearance of the module
is shown in Figure 6. Outdoor performance of the bifacial
Table II. Electrical parameters for the bifacial PV module in this
PV module is now under monitoring and the cumulative
study.
performance will be reported in the future.

Electrical performnce Front surface Rear surface

4. CONCLUSION
Pmax (W) 57.182 44.066
Voc (V) 17.863 16.837
We have presented a screen-printed bifacial solar cell
Isc (A) 4.680 3.600
fabricated on p-type CZ monocrystalline silicon substrate.
Vpm (V) 13.931 13.927
By optimizing the co-firing condition, high-density of
Ipm (V) 4.057 2.990
silver crystallites at the AgAl/Si interface was obtained,

278 Prog. Photovolt: Res. Appl. 2011; 19:275–279 ß 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/pip
L. Yang et al. Screen printed high efficiency bifacial solar cells

which produced low contact resistance. Fill factors of 6. Hilali MM, Gee JM, Hacke P. Bow in screen-printed
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DOI: 10.1002/pip