• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.29-33
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• 2003

Tri-crystalline silicon wafers have three different orientations and three-grain boundaries. In this paper, tri-crystalline silicon (tri-Si) wafers have been used for the fabrication of buried contact solar cells. The optical and micro-structural properties of these cells after texturing in KOH solution have been investigated and compared with those of cast mult- crystalline silicon (multi-Si) wafers. We employed a cost effective fabrication process and achieved buried contact solar cell (BCSC) energy conversion efficiencies up to $15\%$ whereas the cast multi-Si wafer has efficiency around $14\%$.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.20 no.12
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• pp.649-653
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• 2010

In this paper, double texturization of multi crystalline silicon solar cells was studied with laser and reactive ion etching (RIE). In the case of multi crystalline silicon wafers, chemical etching has problems in producing a uniform surface texture. Thus various etching methods such as laser and dry texturization have been studied for multi crystalline silicon wafers. In this study, laser texturization with an Nd:$YVO_4$ green laser was performed first to get the proper hole spacing and $300{\mu}m$ was found to be the most proper value. Laser texturization on crystalline silicon wafers was followed by damage removal in acid solution and RIE to achieve double texturization. This study showed that double texturization on multi crystalline silicon wafers with laser firing and RIE resulted in lower reflectance, higher quantum yield and better efficiency than that process without RIE. However, RIE formed sharp structures on the silicon wafer surfaces, which resulted in 0.8% decrease of fill factor at solar cell characterization. While chemical etching makes it difficult to obtain a uniform surface texture for multi crystalline silicon solar cells, the process of double texturization with laser and RIE yields a uniform surface structure, diminished reflectance, and improved efficiency. This finding lays the foundation for the study of low-cost, high efficiency multi crystalline silicon solar cells.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2003.07a
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• pp.176-180
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• 2003

Tri-crystalline silicon (Tri-Si) wafers have three different orientations and three grain boundaries. In this paper, tri-Si wafers have been used for the fabrication of buried contact solar cells. The optical and micro-structural properties of these cells after texturing in KOH solution have been investigated and compared with those of cast multi-crystalline silicon (multi-Si) wafers. We employed a cost effective fabrication process and achieved buried contact solar cell (BCSC) energy conversion efficiencies up to 15% whereas the cast multi-Si wafer has efficiency around 14%.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.419-419
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• 2016

High efficiency silicon solar cell requires the textured front surface to reduce reflectance and to improve the light trapping. In case of mono-crystalline silicon solar cell, wet etching with alkaline solution is widespread. However, the alkali texturing methods are ineffective in case of multi-crystalline silicon wafer due to grain boundary of random crystallographic orientation. The acid texturing method is generally used in multi-crystalline silicon wafer to reduce the surface reflectance. However the acid textured solar cell gives low short-circuit current due to high reflectivity while it improves the open-circuit voltage. To reduce the reflectivity of multi-crystalline silicon wafer, double texturing method with combination of acid and reactive ion etching is an attractive technical solution. In this paper, we have studied to optimize RIE experimental condition with change of RF power (100W, 150W, 200W, 250W, 300W). During experiment, the gas ratio of SF6 and O2 was fixed as 30:10.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.19-20
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• 2006

Two methods that can reduce reflectance in solar cells are surface texturing and anti-reflection coating. Wet chemical etching is a typical method that surface texturing of multi-crystalline silicon. Wet chemical etching methods are the acid texturization of saw damage on the surface of multi-crystalline silicon or double-step chemical etching after KOH saw damage removal too. These methods of surface texturing are realized by chemical etching in acid solutions HF-$HNO_3$-$H_2O$. In this solutions we can reduce reflectance spectra by simple process etching of multi-crystalline silicon surface. We have obtained reflectance of 27.19% m 400~1100nm from acidic chemical etching after KOH saw damage removal. This result is about 7% less than just saw damage removal substrate. The surface morphology observed by microscope and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.33-45
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• 2017

Crystalline silicon photovoltaic module certification began in 2007. "Renewable Energy Equipment Certification Scheme" was implemented until July 28, 2015. Then, the scheme was changed to "KS Certification Scheme" since July 29, 2015. A total of 2,331 models have been certified by 2016. The proportion of multi crystalline modules in certified products is higher than that of mono crystalline modules, and Korean modules account for 78% of the total certification modules. Chinese solar cells account for the highest percentage of 40% of the total modules and 62.4% of modules certified in 2016 use Chinese solar cells. With the development of technology, module power is continuously increasing, and efficiency is also rising. The average efficiency of mono crystalline module is 0.74% higher than the average of multi crystalline module. As a result of comparing domestic module with Chinese module, the highest efficiency of mono crystalline module and multi crystalline module and the average efficiency of mono crystalline module are higher than those of Chinese module, but the average efficiency of multi crystalline module is similar to that of Chinese module.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.138-143
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• 2007

The effects of texturing and anti-reflection coating on the reflection properties of multi-crystalline silicon solar cell have been investigated. The chemical solutions of alkaline and acidic etching solutions were used for texturing at the surface of multi-crystalline Si wafer. Experiments were performed with various temperature and time conditions in order to determine the optimized etching condition. Alkaline etching solution was found inadequate to the texturing of multi-crystalline Si due to its high reflectance of about 25%. The reflectance of Si wafer texturing with acidic etching solution showed a very low reflectance about 10%, which was attributed to the formation of homogeneous. Also, deposition of ITO anti-reflection coating reduced the reflectance of multi-crystalline si etched with acidic solution($HF+HNO_3$) to 2.6%.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.270-270
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• 2009

The surface texturing technology is one of the methods to improve the efficiency of crystalline silicon solar cell. This process reduced the reflectance at the surface by the so-called double bounce effect and increased the light trapping. Among these surface texturing technology, the laser texturing is effective for multi-crystalline silicon solar cells which have random crystallographic directions. We investigated the characteristics of laser processing on the surface of the multi-crystalline silicon solar cells using the fiber laser.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.52 no.11
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• pp.496-500
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• 2003

A low-cost, large area, random, maskless texturing scheme independent of crystal orientation is expected to significantly impact terrestrial photovoltaic technology. We investigated silicon surface microstructures formed by reactive ion etching (RIE) in Multi-Hollow cathode system. Desirable texturing effect has been achieved when radio-frequency (rf) power of about 20 Watt per one hollow cathode glow is applied for our RF Multi-Hollow cathode system. The black silicon etched surface shows almost zero reflectance in the visible region as well as in near IR region. The etched silicon surface is covered by columnar microstructures with diameters from 50 to 100 nm and depth of about 500 nm. We have successfully achieved 11.7% efficiency of mono-crystalline silicon solar cell and 10.2% multi-crystalline silicon solar cell.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.685-688
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• 2009

Surface Texturing is very important process for high cell efficiency in crystalline silicon solar cell. Anisotropic texturing with an alkali etchant was known not to be able to produce uniform surface morphology in multi-crystalline silicon (mc-Si), because of its different etching rate with random crystal orientation. In order to reduce surface reflectance of mc-Si wafer, the general etching tendency was studied with HF/HN$O_3$/De-ionized Water acidic solution. And the surface structures of textured mc-Si in various HF/HN$O_3$ ratios were compared. The surface morphology and reflectance of textured silicon wafers were measured by FE-SEM and UVvisible spectrophotometer, respectively. We obtained average reflectance of $16{\sim}19$% for wavelength between 400 nm and 900 nm depending on different etching conditions.