Long term stability analysis of copper front side metallization for silicon solar cells

In this work the development and evaluation of a copper solar cell front side metallization based on a screen printed silver seed layer, a plated nickel diffusion barrier, a plated copper conductive layer and a plated silver capping is presented. Due to a slight adjustment of the standard screen printing process, and subsequent plating of Ni, Cu and Ag, silver consumption was reduced to < 16 mg per cell front side on standard BSF 15.6 cm x 15.6 cm mono crystalline wafers, produced only with inline capable techniques. Contact adhesion forces of 1.5 N/mm and, efficiencies of 18.4 % were achieved. For the long term stability analysis on cell and module level, cells with different nickel diffusion barrier masses (10-40 mg/cell) were treated on hotplates at 200, 225 and 250 °C while detecting degradation due to copper diffusion by measuring the pFF. Sufficient cell life times are predicted for 10 mg Ni by the resulting Arrhenius plot. After 750 h damp heat test of one cell modules no visible degradation was determined. This means that accelerated degradation on hotplates show the degradation due to copper diffusion more strongly than 750 hours damp heat test. In an additional SEM analysis the plated nickel diffusion barrier showed a closed layer on the fingers and an incomplete layer on the busbars, indicating busbars as possible weak points for copper diffusion due to inhomogeneous Ni plating.