2026-05-24T05:26:08Zhttps://keep.lib.asu.edu/oai/requestoai:keep.lib.asu.edu:node-1545562024-12-20T18:25:12Zoai_pmh:alloai_pmh:repo_items154556
https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.38618
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
All Rights Reserved
2016
ix, 82 pages : illustrations (some color)
Doctoral Dissertation
Academic theses
Text
eng
Sun, Wen-Cheng
Tao, Meng
Vasileska, Dragica
Yu, Hongbin
Goryll, Michael
Arizona State University
Partial requirement for: Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2016
Includes bibliographical references (pages 77-82)
Field of study: Electrical engineering
To date, the most popular and dominant material for commercial solar cells is<br/><br/>crystalline silicon (or wafer-Si). It has the highest cell efficiency and cell lifetime out<br/><br/>of all commercial solar cells. Although the potential of crystalline-Si solar cells in<br/><br/>supplying energy demands is enormous, their future growth will likely be constrained<br/><br/>by two major bottlenecks. The first is the high electricity input to produce<br/><br/>crystalline-Si solar cells and modules, and the second is the limited supply of silver<br/><br/>(Ag) reserves. These bottlenecks prevent crystalline-Si solar cells from reaching<br/><br/>terawatt-scale deployment, which means the electricity produced by crystalline-Si<br/><br/>solar cells would never fulfill a noticeable portion of our energy demands in the future.<br/><br/>In order to solve the issue of Ag limitation for the front metal grid, aluminum (Al)<br/><br/>electroplating has been developed as an alternative metallization technique in the<br/><br/>fabrication of crystalline-Si solar cells. The plating is carried out in a<br/><br/>near-room-temperature ionic liquid by means of galvanostatic electrolysis. It has been<br/><br/>found that dense, adherent Al deposits with resistivity in the high 10^–6 ohm-cm range<br/><br/>can be reproducibly obtained directly on Si substrates and nickel seed layers. An<br/><br/>all-Al Si solar cell, with an electroplated Al front electrode and a screen-printed Al<br/><br/>back electrode, has been successfully demonstrated based on commercial p-type<br/><br/>monocrystalline-Si solar cells, and its efficiency is approaching 15%. Further<br/><br/>optimization of the cell fabrication process, in particular a suitable patterning<br/><br/>technique for the front silicon nitride layer, is expected to increase the efficiency of<br/><br/>the cell to ~18%. This shows the potential of Al electroplating in cell metallization is<br/><br/>promising and replacing Ag with Al as the front finger electrode is feasible.
Engineering
Energy
Aluminum Electroplating
Silicon Solar Cells
Silicon Solar Cells
Aluminum electrodes
Electroplating
Development of silver-free silicon photovoltaic solar cells with all-aluminum electrodes