Abstract
This chapter discusses industrial technologies for manufacturing crystalline silicon solar cells at low costs. Typical efficiency of commercially produced crystalline silicon solar cells lies in the range of 14%–17%. Because the efficiency of the cell influences the production cost at any production stage, considerable efforts are directed toward efficiency improvement of solar cells. The required near future efficiency goals for industrial cells are 18–20% on monocrystalline, and 16–18% on multicrystalline silicon. Based on laboratory scale achievements, one can consider that production type cells able to fulfill the efficiency goal should have features including front surface texturing, optimized emitter surface concentration and doping profile, effective front surface passivation, fine line front electrode, and front electrode passivation. This chapter discusses the concepts of cell processing, substrates, etching, texturing, optical confinement, and junction formation in detail. It then explains front surface passivation and functions of antireflection coating. Techniques of gettering by phosphorous diffusion and gettering by aluminum treatment are also discussed. Concepts related to screen-printed solar cells, buried contact solar cells, solar cells on silicon ribbons, and back-contacted solar cells are explained in detail in the chapter.