Hot-melt screen-printing of front contacts on crystalline silicon solar cells

Olaisen, B.R.; Holt, A.; Marstein, Erik Stensrud; Sauar, E.; Shaikh, A.; McVicker, K.; Salami, J.; Miranda, H.; Kim, S.S.

doi:10.1109/pvsc.2005.1488323

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…However, such fine line metallization processes had to maintain a sufficient lateral conductivity of the grid as well as a sufficiently low contact resistance even on lowly doped emitters to keep series resistance losses at a minimum. Various approaches like screen printing of hotmelt Ag pastes, 48 double printing, 49,50 usage of fine meshes with optimized emulsion, 51 and the application of single and double layer stencils 52 were evaluated and optimized. Intense industrial and academic research and a consequent optimization of machinery, screens, and pastes as well as newly emerging trends in the field of cell interconnection using narrow ribbons or multiple wires enabled an impressive progress towards fine line metallization within the last decade.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Printing technologies for silicon solar cell metallization: A comprehensive review

Tepner

Lorenz

2023

Progress in Photovoltaics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper presents a comprehensive overview on printing technologies for metallization of solar cells. Throughout the last 30 years, flatbed screen printing has established itself as the predominant metallization process for the mass production of silicon solar cells. For this reason, we will provide a detailed review on its history, its evolution over time, and how the continuous efforts of the scientific and industrial community for further improvements revolutionized the entire PV industry. Furthermore, we will guide the reader through the physics on silicon solar cell metallization, the fundamentals on contact formation, and what type of challenges and requirements these topics create for printing technologies. The main topic of this review addresses the flatbed screen-printing process mechanics, its different process sequences, corresponding screen technology, and the very important impact of paste rheology on the printing result. Finally, we will compare alternative upcoming printing approaches to flatbed screen printing and discuss how they might solve upcoming challenges in metallization in terms of increasing the throughput rates at an everdecreasing grid line width and reduced silver consumption.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Printing technologies for silicon solar cell metallization: A comprehensive review

Tepner

Lorenz

2023

Progress in Photovoltaics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, the agglomeration of the metal paste's particles, in combination with the limited opening areas in the mesh, has restricted the minimum printed finger width to about 60 µm . To overcome this limitation, other kinds of screens, such as two‐layer metal stencils and hybrid stencils , are being developed, and new metallization technologies have been extensively studied, including ink‐jet and hotmelt printing, pad printing , evaporating metal contact , as well as light‐induced plating (LIP) . Ink‐jet masking, followed by high‐precision alignment screen printing and LIP, has been integrated into selective emitter cell production by some equipment suppliers .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of industrial c‐Si solar cell's front metallization by advanced numerical simulation

Yang

Altermatt

Zhu

et al. 2011

Progress in Photovoltaics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The influence of the front metallization on the performance of industrially fabricated c‐Si solar cells is quantified by means of a combination of optical, semiconductor, and circuit modeling. Special attention is given to the front metallization of conventionally processed emitters. First, we verify our model by reproducing the measured I–V curves of industrially fabricated cells. Based on this, the potential changes in performance are predicted by variations in finger spacing, finger resistivity, busbar numbers, and contact resistivity. We also assess the benefits derived from the higher aspect ratios of the fingers: if the fingers are 120 (or 60 µm) wide, increasing the finger height from 15 to 25 µm increases their efficiency by 0.06% (or 0.7%) absolute if a conventional emitter is used. This implies that, if the fingers cannot be made as narrow as 60 µm in industrial mass production, the economic gains from higher aspect ratios may be rather limited, because there is a trade‐off between improved cell efficiency and the increasing cost of silver. Simulations show that, for the light‐induced plating approach, the seed layer must be made as narrow as 50 µm in order to achieve an efficiency gain of 1% absolute with a plating of 10 µm silver. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

show abstract

“…It has been developed for decades and efforts have been made to understand the contact mechanisms to improve the cell efficiency in this mature technique since 1970s. Although various advanced screen printing techniques have been evolved to overcome the drawback of the conventional one [22][23][24][25], like the high grid width (more than 100 µm), poor conductivity and aspect ratio which confine the fill factor to not more than 77%. Despite the limitations, because of its simplicity, high productivity and cost effectiveness screen printing is the most commonly implemented metallization technique in industry till date.…”

Section: Front Contact Metallization Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An alternative method for screen printing is to use stencil, which has a non-wear advantage and can printing lines with higher definitions down to 30 µm [31]. [25].…”

Section: 11a)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Desarrollo de procesos para formación de contactos con láser para módulos thin film CIGS para aplicaciones fotovoltaicas

Chen¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Hot-melt screen-printing of front contacts on crystalline silicon solar cells

Cited by 4 publications

References 1 publication

Printing technologies for silicon solar cell metallization: A comprehensive review

Printing technologies for silicon solar cell metallization: A comprehensive review

Analysis of industrial c‐Si solar cell's front metallization by advanced numerical simulation

Desarrollo de procesos para formación de contactos con láser para módulos thin film CIGS para aplicaciones fotovoltaicas

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About