Status of the EU FP7 HERCULES project: what is the potential of n-type silicon solar cells in europe?

The concept proposed by the HERCULES project is to develop innovative n-type monocrystalline c-Si device structures based on both sides' contacted silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells, on interdigitated back-contact (IBC) solar cells with alternative junction formation, as well as on hybrid concepts (homo-heterojunction). These concepts are the most promising technologies to reach ultra-high efficiencies with industrially relevant processes. The HERCULES strategy is to transfer the developed processes to industrial scale by considering all major cost drivers of the entire manufacturing process chain. The final objective is to obtain both high-efficiency solar cells and modules, based on adequately simple process sequences. It requires strong expertise and equipment mastering in order to provide a commercially viable technology that can be implemented by the European PV industry. To this end, the HERCULES consortium takes advantage of its leading European expertise in both research and production. In this paper, major results are presented concerning the first 30 months in material, solar cell development, module integration and pilot line activity. The strong improvements achieved in all the value chain demonstrate the strong need of collaboration within all partners to reach very ambitious objectives from the optimization of n-type solar cells & modules up to production level.