Effect of Sub-Grains and Crystal Defects on Monolike Si Solar Cell Performance.docVIP

Materials Sciences and Applications, 2013, 4, 103-108 103 /10.4236/msa.2013.42011 Published Online February 2013 (/journal/msa) Effect of Sub-Grains and Crystal Defects on Monolike Si Solar Cell Performance Chris Yang , Hao Wu , Ian Cooper 1* 2 3 1 3 Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute, Atlanta, USA; 2 The George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Atlanta, USA; University Center of Excellence for Photovoltaic Research and Education, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA. Email: chris.yang@ * Received November 16 , 2012; revised December 17 , 2012; accepted January 15 , 2013 th th th ABSTRACT This paper investigates crystalline orientation in monolike silicon wafers and its effect on solar cell performance. Monolike silicon wafers from two different bricks cut from interior and corner region of an ingot were compared. The mono grain in the interior brick is nearly perfect, but there are some large oblong shaped sub-grains in the corner brick. The large sub-grains at corner brick wafers are oriented at (311), instead of (100) orientation. The (311) grains contain high density of dislocation and cannot be effectively textured by alkaline solution, therefore lowering the cell efficiency significantly. There is about 0.86% (abs) cell efficiency reduction on the monolike cells that contain large sub-grains. Keywords: Monolike; Defects; Grain Orientation; Cell Efficiency 1. Introduction effectively textured with conventional alkaline solution. Variations in multicrystalline grain areas will also lead to a wide range of cell efficiency in a production line. It is therefore critical to control the non-mono grain regions and to optimize monolike cell process. In this paper, we study the crystalline structure of monolike s