For wafer based silicon solar cells, the combination of amorphous/crystalline silicon (a-Si:H/c-Si) heterojunction emitters (SHJ) [1] and back-contacted back-junction solar cell concepts (BCBJ) [2] offer a very high efficiency potential of around 24%. Stangl et al. proposed a relatively simple and therefore attractive cell concept comprising a two level metallization isolated by an insulation layer. The emitter layer consisting of doped amorphous silicon with a thickness of several nm and the emitter metallization layer comprise circular openings where the back surface field layers and the respective metallization establish contact to the absorber.In this work the potential of inkjet printing for the deposition of the isolation layer with photoresists or other polymeric fluids is evaluated. Challenges are the required placement precision and the feature size. In order to produce circular openings of the order 10 μm, the drop formation has to be optimized, and the ink spreading on both surfaces - on the aluminum emitter and on the silicon wafer substrate - have to be controlled.
Ingo Reinhold, Nicola Mingirulli, Jan Haschke, Wolfgang Voit, Bernd Rech, Werner Zapka, "Inkjet Printing of Isolation Layers for Back-Contacted Silicon-Heterojunction Solar Cells" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies and Digital Fabrication (NIP27), 2011, pp 651 - 654, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2011.27.1.art00063_2