Developing a high throughput metallization approach for silicon solar cells based on flexographic printing

Rotational printing methods like flexographic printing are a highly interesting approach for a high throughput front side metallization of silicon solar cells. Within the present contribution, flexographic printing has been applied for the seed layer front side metalliczation on Czochralski-grown silicon wafers. Three seed layer silver inks with different viscosities have been prepared for the experiment. The impact of printing pressure on the seed layer finger width has been investigated. It was found that printing pressure has a strong impact on the width of flexo printed fingers. Contact fingers down to 32 mm width could be realized by applying the optimum printing pressure. The fabricated solar cells achieved an average conversion efficiency of nj = 18.7 % after silver light-induced plating.