Laser-induced nickel deposition from an aqueous electrolyte for the front-side metallization of silicon solar cells

This work proposes a laser-assisted metallization process out of a nickel electrolyte. A nickel seed layer is created utilizing a local laser irradiation of a silicon wafer immersed in a nickel solution. Since the grid pattern is directly defined by the laser, no additional masking layer is necessary for this process step. Subsequently this seed layer is thickened by light induced silver galvanic [1]. In this work different Ni solutions and laser configurations were analyzed. With the optimized parameters, silicon solar cells with efficiencies up to 13.4% could be reached.