High efficiency monocrystalline silicon solar cells

The annual production of solar cells has grown by more than 35 % annually over the last 5 years. In order to ensure a rapid and sustainable expansion in the future, the cost of solar electricity still has to be reduced significantly. Substantially increas ing the efficiency is an approach that holds much promise. The main research challenge is to develop technology for producing cost-effective high efficiency solar cells from high quality monocrystalline Si wafers. The understanding of different loss mech anisms in real Si solar cells will be extended, and process technology and cell designs aiming at reducing these losses will be developed. Among the challenges are the development, modeling and design of a backside contacted laboratory Si solar cell, incl uding new emitter structures and contacting technology, the development of suitable surface passivation layers, the development of an industrially compatible production process based on screen-printing technology, including pattern definition processes a nd alignment technology and to ensure that the initially high material quality is maintained or improved throughout the solar cell production process. Initially, a laboratory high efficiency solar cell will be made. The lessons learnt from this cell will be used in the parallel development of a process for cost-effective production of high efficiency Si solar cells using industrially compatible techniques. Care will be taken to ensure that the processes used for the production of the laboratory cell can b e substituted with other, industrially compatible process steps. Most of the solar cell process development and characterization will be performed in the solar cell laboratory at IFE. Through a continued active collaboration with the University of Uppsala and the University of Oslo, as well as other international partners, there will be access to advanced semiconductor process technology required for the development and testing of the high efficiency laboratory cell