Novel industrial atmospheric pressure dry texturing procress for silicon solar cell improvement

The front texture of crystalline silicon solar cells plays a crucial role in order to effectively harvest light and transform it into electricity. In this paper, a novel technology based on dry atmospheric pressure etching is presented. It allows the single-sided inline etching of c-Si wafers using the global warming potential-free process gas fluorine (F2). Vast improvements of light trapping are already achieved leading to weighted reflection values below 8% without dielectric anti-reflection coating. The passivation of the relatively rough surfaces can most effectively be facilitated using ALD-Al2O3 films stacked with PECVD-SiNx layers. The paper presents SEM images of the surface structures and the basic setup principle of the new production tool.