The use of porous silicon layers in thin‐film silicon solar cells

In the quest for lowering the manufacturing cost of silicon solar cells, imec has been working successfully on two crystalline Si ‘thin‐film’ cell concepts. In a first concept, a 20 µm‐thin Si solar cell is epitaxially grown on top of a porous Si‐based Bragg‐type reflector which is electrochemically etched in a low‐cost UMG Si substrate. Large area solar cells with efficiencies of 15.2% have been made, using (semi‐)industrial processing tools. This clearly demonstrates that this cell concept has almost reached the stage of industrial application. In a second, longer‐term approach, a 1–5 µm‐thin, stand‐alone mono‐crystalline film is created based on the controlled annealing of an ordered macroporous silicon layer (the ‘Epi‐free’ process). With this very thin Si layer, a simple proof‐of‐concept solar cell has been made exhibiting an efficiency of 4%. By optimizing the cell process in terms of light trapping and passivation, efficiencies over 15% can be expected from this technology.