Screen printed contacts for crystalline silicon solar cells -an overview

Over the years, the photovoltaic market, worldwide, has been witnessing double digit growth rate. The silicon solar cell manufacturing technology has evolved to optimally utilize raw materials to address this growth. One of the ways in which manufacturers are addressing the challenge is by increasing the cell size and making thinner wafers. With this change in parameters, understanding the metal contact formation in solar cells becomes paramount to improve their efficiency. Screen printing is a widely used method to form metal contacts on solar cells and is ideally suited for large volume manufacturing. This paper presents a review of the: (i) role of screen printing in various solar cell architectures, and (ii) existing models for current conduction and contact formation mechanisms. An alternate approach to current conduction and contact formation mechanism in silicon solar cells is proposed.