Plasma Texturing of Silicon Wafers and Finished Solar Cell for Mass Production

Standard plasma texturing of silicon wafers are not widely introduced within mass production due to several challenges which have to be overcome before implementation i.e. surface contamination, surface near damaging due to ion bombardment, and surface passivation. Within this contribution we will show our current status to overcome these challenges. We will present that the electrical and optical properties of ICP only plasma textured samples are sufficient for solar cell production. Since in ICP processes the ion bombardment is low we also will discuss our current understanding of the plasma process based on experimental results of the self-masking process. Furthermore, a new plasma texturing approach texturing the SiN layer of finished solar cells is introduced for the first time which overcome all problems introduced by the plasma texturing of bare solar wafers.