Reduction of thermal load in the fabrication process of bifacial silicon solar cells

With the aim of reducing the thermal load to obtain higher final bulk lifetimes, a new scheme for the fabrication of bifacial solar cells is proposed, in which masking thermal oxidations are replaced by SiN layer depositions. High final bulk lifetimes have been obtained thanks to the thermal load reduction, improving cell efficiencies. The process with SiN layers gives 14.6% when illuminated from the p(+) side and 13.3% when illuminated from the n(+) side for multicrystalline silicon of n-type, , and 16.2% and 16.7% when illuminated from p+ and n+ sides, respectively, for Cz-n silicon.