Bifacial multicrystalline silicon solar cells

A bifacial solar cell structure is applied to multicrystalline substrates obtained from the OTC cast material. The double sided cathode configuration made it possible to collect photogenerated minority carriers from the nearest side of the cell, which allows the minority carrier not necessarily to travel across the substrate having short diffusion lengths. The rear cathode acts as a current booster for the front cathode for light entering from the front side, and vice versa. Because of this two fold current enhancement, cell outputs equivalent to nearly 20% efficiency are obtainable from a 15% cell when 30% albedo from the rear side is incorporated. A simplified screen printing process for cell fabrication provides a promising method of scaled production.< >