New Texturing Technique Suitable for the Mass Production of Multicrystalline Si Solar Cells

We proposed a new texturing method based on a wet etching with metallic catalysts several years ago. Here we present our recent results of it. We successfully simplify the texturing process by the new mesoporous Si formation and by the acidic treatment. The conversion efficiency is 0.55% (absolute) higher than that of alkaline textured solar cell. It takes a few minutes for texturing and the amount of etched Si is about 1um per side. It is suitable for mass production of multicrystalline Si solar cells, especially for using thin wafers. Furthermore, the NOx generation is smaller than that of the usual acidic texturing and there is no need for expensive equipments. This technique also seems to be useful for several kinds of wafers that have no damaged layers, like RGS, SR and EFG, because it makes texture itself on their surfaces.