Abstract
This thesis investigates the fabrication of thin crystalline silicon solar cell, especially the kerf-loss less solar cells. This technology can reduce the silicon usage of c-Si solar cell and decline its cost. In this study, we used the device simulation tool to discuss the effects of silicon bulk lifetime, surface recombination velocity, and wafer thickness to the properties of solar cell, and determined that the decline of light absorption is the main issue of thin crystalline solar cells. We also fabricated thin crystalline silicon solar cell of different structure, such as standard cell, selective emitter cell and PERC cells. The comparison of cell efficiencies showed that light doping emitter and surface passivation can improve the Voc. But the main improvement was due to the Jsc increase caused by the light reflection on the back surface of PERC cells. Besides, this study suggested two kind processes of kerf-loss less wafers and cells, including Thermal-stress Induced Pattern Transfer (TIPT) and Stress induced Lift-off Method (SLiM-cut). TIPT method deposited Si thin layer on the patterned sapphire substrate. After exfoliated the Si layer using thermal stress, the pattern on the sapphire substrate was transformed to the Si thin layer. It can be used as the honeycomb surface texture for light absorption without any mask process. SLiM-cut method can peeled off a Si thin film around 40m from a thicker substrate. After removing the metal and surface residual on the peeled silicon film, the HJT process was applied on the film to fabricate solar cells. The maximum efficiency of solar cells was up to 14.7%. This result provides a physical and experimental basis to develop non-kerf-loss thin crystalline solar cells whose performance can be further improved in the future.