Advanced damage-free neutral beam etching technology to texture Si wafer with honeycomb pattern for broadband light trapping in photovoltaics
We introduce a new innovative damage-free neutral beam etching (NBE) technique to transfer a honeycomb resist pattern to silicon (Si) wafer (thickness of 180 µm). Front-surface texturing of Si helps to reduce surface reflection and increase light absorption for solar cell applications. NBE was perfo...
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Veröffentlicht in: | Journal of materials science. Materials in electronics 2021-12, Vol.32 (23), p.27449-27461 |
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Format: | Artikel |
Sprache: | eng |
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Zusammenfassung: | We introduce a new innovative damage-free neutral beam etching (NBE) technique to transfer a honeycomb resist pattern to silicon (Si) wafer (thickness of 180 µm). Front-surface texturing of Si helps to reduce surface reflection and increase light absorption for solar cell applications. NBE was performed with Cl
2
and Cl
2
/ SF
6
gases chemistries, and the influence of the etching time on the etching profiles, surface reflection and potential short-circuit densities (p-J
SC
) was studied. The Si etching rate with pure Cl
2
was ~ 5 nm/min and resulted in anisotropic etch profiles and a minimum surface reflection of 15% at 1000 nm, which is too high for practical use. With the introduction of 5% of SF
6
, the etching rate increased to 30 nm/min, the etching became isotropic (anisotropy of ~ 1), and sloped sidewalls appeared. NBE with Cl
2
(95%)/SF
6
(5%) produced a sample with an average surface reflection of 3.7% over the wavelength range 300–1000 nm without any antireflection coating. The minimum surface reflection in this case was ~ 1% at 1030 nm and p-J
SC
was 40.63 mA/cm
2
. This type of surface pattern is well suited for low-consumption-material (thin), high-efficiency Si solar cells. |
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ISSN: | 0957-4522 1573-482X |
DOI: | 10.1007/s10854-021-07121-9 |