High efficiency screen printed bifacial solar cells on monocrystalline CZ silicon

We present industrialized bifacial solar cells on large area (149 cm2) 2 cm CZ monocrystalline silicon wafers processed with industrially relevant techniques such as liquid source BBr3 and POCl3 open-tube furnace diffusions, plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) SiNx deposition, and screen printed contacts. The fundamental analysis of the paste using at boron-diffused surface and the bifacial solar cell firing cycle has been investigated. The resulting solar cells have front and rear efficiencies of 16.6 and 12.8%, respectively. The ratio of the rear JSC to front JSC is 76.8%. It increases the bifacial power by 15.4% over a conventional solar cell at 20% of 1-sun rear illumination, which equals to the power of a conventional solar cell with 19.2% efficiency. We also present a bifacial glass–glass photovoltaic (PV) module with 30 bifacial cells with the electrical characteristics. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.