Experiment study on micro-structure on different crystallographic planes of mc-Si etched in alkaline solution

The investigation of multi-crystalline silicon （mc-Si） surface etching technology is a key point in solar cell research. In this paper, mc-Si surface was etched in the common alkaline solution modified by an additive for 20 minutes at 78-80~C. Samples＇ surface morphology was observed by scanning electron microscope （SEM）. It is firstly found that the etched mc-Si surface has the uniform distribution of trap pits although the morphologies of trap pits are slightly different on different crystallographic planes. Si （100） plane was covered with many small Si-mountaln ranges or long V-shape channels arranged in a crisscross pat- tern. For （110） plane and （111） plane, they were full of a lot of triangle pit-traps （or quadrilateral holes） and twisted earthworm trap pits, respectively. The measured reflectance of the sample was 20.5% at wavelength range of 400--900 nm. These results illustrate that alkaline solution modified by an additive can effectively etch out trap pits with a good trapping light effect on mc-Si surfaces. This method should be very valuable for mc-Si solar cells.