Control Of Texture Size On As-Cut Crystalline Silicon By Microparticle-Assisted Texturing (Mpat) Process

The texture size on as-cut crystalline silicon (c-Si) is drastically reduced from similar to 22 mu m to <2.7 mu m when mixing glass microparticles with conventional alkaline texturing solutions. The processing time and c-Si loss are considerably reduced from >15 to similar to 3 min and from >8 to 2 mu m (for one side), respectively. Thus, this process is applicable to very thin c-Si. High-quality surface passivation with the effective minority carrier lifetimes >7 ms, corresponding to surface recombination velocity of 0.38 cm/s was possible. After anti-reflection coating, the reflectivity similar to 0.4% at 600nm, and <2% in wide wavelength 450-950nm was achieved on this new texture.