Cell Processing

With the expected increase in annual photovoltaic production capacity beyond 1TWp/a (terrawatt-peak per year), the emphasis on novel, next-generation production technologies gains significance from the perspective of potentially lowering production costs as well as increasing sustainability by reducing the resources required in manufacturing. The focus of this work is to analyse the impact of high-throughput (HTP), next-generation silicon solar cell production technologies, as developed within the framework of the NextTec research and development project, on the required i) amount of equipment, ii) capital expenditure (CAPEX) and iii) labour, herein termed as key performance indicators (KPIs), for a solar cell production facility with an annual capacity of 10GWp.

We develop a novel manufacturing process sequence for polysilicon on oxide (POLO) IBC solar cells by applying a local PECVD SiOxNy/na- Si deposition through a glass shadow mask to form the structured carrier-selective n-poly-Si emitter in a single process step.

In this paper, three generations of silicon heterojunction (HJT) solar cell technical routes in China are reviewed. We define the structure of HJT cells with an amorphous silicon thin film on two surfaces of a monocrystalline-silicon (c-Si) wafer as HJT 1.0, which is the first generation of HJT.

This paper reviews the idea and methodologies of the passivation-liquid-based compensating technology for the separation loss of silicon cells, which provides future perspective for the photovoltaic industry and potentially helps to promote industry upgrades.

As the PV industry rapidly advances towards annual PV production and installations on a terawatt scale, many aspects that are currently not critical will need to be considered. Among these, material availability is probably one of the most pressing ones. Established production routines will need to be changed, which may pose significant time constraints in the light of the fast-growing market. The focus of this paper will be on the use of silver for solar cell metallization. Past developments are discussed and an overview is given of the fast-growing number of relevant publications from the scientific community that deal with the problems associated with silver.

This paper reviews the steps to making a breakthrough in TOPCon efficiency, from cell to PV module, by using industrially viable manufacturing processes. A detailed characterization and investigation of the primary losses of JinkoSolar’s TOPCon record cell of July 2020, with an efficiency of 24.8%, is presented.

This paper gives an overview of the technological maturity of various TOPCon approaches with the goal of achieving the most cost-effective, resource-conserving and mass-production-capable implementation.

This paper reviews those associated fabrication technologies for the mass production of Ni/Cu-plated contacts. The technologies currently in use in the PV industry for plated contacts, as well as the developing technologies having high scaling-up potential, will be reviewed. In addition, the future requirements for plating metallization will be discussed.

This paper discusses what is actually behind these announcements and how an evolutionary industry sector such as PVis becoming, it seems, decidedly revolutionary with large jumps in efficiency.

This paper presents an analysis and the results of extensive simulations of the efficiency limits and roadmap to 25.5% of a tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) solar cell, on the basis of an efficiency level of 25.21% (designed area, identified by ISFH) achieved through three years of continuous technical optimization on a pilot line at Longi.