The market growth and the need of low cost materials make multicrystalline silicon the main alternative for the solar cell industry. The goal of this article is to present the development of an industrial process for manufacturing multicrystalline silicon solar cells by using only one phosphorus diffusion and screen printing metallization. The n+ emitter and the metallic grid were optimized through simulations and the influence of the width of the metal fingers and the bulk minority carrier lifetime were also analyzed. The influence of the firing conditions of the metal pastes was experimentally studied. According to the results obtained from the simulations, the value of the sheet resistance must be greater than 50 Ω/□ in order to maintain the efficiency of the solar cells. We also concluded that the efficiency decreases from 0.3% to 0.5% when the width of the metal fingers is doubled. From experimental results, it was found that the firing temperature of metallization pastes significantly affects efficiency. The highest efficiency achieved was 11.5% for a firing temperature of 860°C.
Solar energy; solar cells; multicrystalline silicon; fabrication process
