Impact of Nickel silicide Rear Metallization on Series Resistance of Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells

Rabab R. Bahabry, Amir N Hanna, Arwa T. Kutbee, Abdurrahman Gumus, Muhammad Mustafa Hussain

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

The Silicon-based solar cell is one of the most important enablers toward high efficiency and low-cost clean energy resource. Metallization of silicon-based solar cells typically utilizes screen printed silver-Aluminium (Ag-Al) which affects the optimal electrical performance. To date, metal silicide-based ohmic contacts are occasionally used as an alternative candidate only to the front contact grid lines in crystalline silicon (c-Si) based solar cells. In this paper, we investigate the electrical characteristics of nickel mono-silicide (NiSi)/Cu-Al ohmic contact on the rear side of c-Si solar cells. We observe a significant enhancement in the fill factor of around 6.5% for NiSi/Cu-Al rear contacts leading to increasing the efficiency by 1.2% compared to Ag-Al. This is attributed to the improvement of the parasitic resistance in which the series resistance decreased by 0.737 Ω.cm². Further, we complement experimental observation with a simulation of different contact resistance values, which manifests NiSi/Cu-Al rear contact as a promising low-cost metallization for c-Si solar cells with enhanced efficiency.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1627-1632
Number of pages6
JournalEnergy Technology
Volume6
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 26 2018

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