Investigations on the influence of different annealing steps on silicon solar cells with silver thick film contacts

With annealing steps being used to improve industrial silicon solar cells with screen printed front side contacts, detailed investigations on different annealing processes on solar cells are presented in this paper. The focus is on the impact of an annealing step on the front side contact. We examine the influence of annealing steps differing in duration and temperature on a variety of monocrystaliline and multicrystalline silicon solar cells. The main goal of this study is to clarify the front contactâ s sensitivity to annealing steps. Amongst other we study the behaviour of over- and under-fired silicon solar cells towards annealing. Further, long term behaviour of annealed solar cells is investigated. Characterisation includes illuminated and dark IV curves and contact resistance measurements.