Polycrystalline silicon solar cells with V-grooved surface

Abstract Mechanical grooving techniques are effective to uniform reduction of surface reflectance over all polycrystalline silicon solar cells. Furthermore, to reduce the surface reflectance, a V-shaped grooving technique was newly examined. To improve the short-circuit current ( I sc ) and the open-circuit voltage ( V oc ), a shallow n + /p junction was also examined for the grooved surface. By forming the shallower junction, both I sc and V oc remarkably increased. Consequently, a record high conversion efficiency of 17.2% has been confirmed at Japan Quality Assurance Organization (JQA) for a 10 × 10 cm 2 area polycrystalline silicon solar cell.