Totally Vacuum-Free Processed Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells over 17.5% Conversion Efficiency

In this work, we introduce a totally vacuum-free cost-efficient crystalline silicon solar cells. Solar cells were fabricated based on low-cost techniques including spin coating, spray pyrolysis, and screen-printing. A best efficiency of 17.51% was achieved by non-vacuum process with a basic structure of CZ-Si p-type solar cells. Short circuit current density (JSC) and open circuit voltage (VOC) of the best cell were measured as 38.1 mA·cm−2 and 596.2 mV, respectively with fill factor (FF) of 77.1%. Suns-Voc measurements were carried out and the detrimental effect of the series resistance on the performance was revealed. It is concluded that higher efficiencies are achievable by the improvements of the contacts and by utilizing good quality starting wafers.