RIE-texturing of industrial multicrystalline silicon solar cells

We developed a maskless plasma texturing technique for multicrystalline Si (mc-Si) cells using reactive ion etching (RIE) that results in higher cell performance than that of standard untextured cells. Elimination of plasma damage has been achieved while keeping front reflectance to low levels. Internal quantum efficiencies higher than those on planar and wet-textured cells have been obtained, boosting cell currents and efficiencies by up to 6% on tricrystalline Si cells.