Corrugation Architecture Enabled Ultra-Flexible Mono-Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells via Plasma Etching and Laser Ablation

Abstract

Extreme mechanical flexibility is highly desirable for the new generation of Mono-Crystalline Silicon solar cells while maintaining the high power conversion efficiency. Here, we show a novel corrugation architecture, which transforms rigid interdigitated back contact 5 $\times$5 inch c-Si solar wafers into an ultra-flexible (140 m bending radius) version while retaining its original efficiency of 17%. We also investigated using both fluorine-based plasma and Ytterbium fiber laser for forming the corrugation architecture.