Acid treated surface morphology of fixed abrasive sawn wafers

In general multi-crystalline silicon wafer slicing, the loose abrasive sawing process (including glycol and abrasive materials) is the commonly used technology. However, in recent years, fixed abrasive sawing (FAS) has attracted more attention due to the lower amount of SiC required (the major abrasive used in multi-crystalline silicon cutting). One concern with this process is that the surface etching rate of FAS wafers is lower than that in the slurry process, which leads to high levels of light reflection, more residual surface damage and lower Jsc. As a result, it leads to lower cell efficiency than can be achieved with loose abrasive sawn wafers, and thus the goal of this work is to induce an acidic pretreatment process that improves the surface etching rate.