Specific contact resistance and metallurgical process of the silver-based paste for making ohmic contact structure on the porous silicon/p-Si surface of the silicon solar cell

Porous silicon has been considered as a promising optoelectronic material for developing a variety of optoelectronic devices and sensors. In the present study, the electrical properties and metallurgical process of the screen-printed Ag metallization formed on the porous silicon surface of the silicon solar cell have been investigated. The contact structure consists of thick-film Ag metal contact patterned on the top of the porous silicon surface. The sintering process consists of a rapid firing step at 750–825 °C in air ambient. It results in the formation of a nearly perfect contact structure between the Ag metal and porous silicon/p-Si structure that forms the top metalization for the screen-printed silicon solar cells. The SEM picture shows that Ag metal firmly coalesces with the silicon surface with a relatively smooth interfacial morphology. This implies that high temperature fire-through step has not introduced any signs of adverse effect of junction puncture or excessive Ag indiffusion, etc. The three-point probe (TPP) method was applied to estimate the specific contact resistance, ρ _c (Ω-cm²) of the contact structure. The TPP measurement shows that contact structure has excellent ohmic properties with ρ _c = 1.2 × 10⁻⁶ Ω-cm² when the metal contact sintered at 825 °C. This value of the specific contact resistance is almost three orders of magnitude lower than the corresponding value of the ρ _c = 7.35 × 10⁻³ Ω-cm² obtained for the contact structure sintered at 750 °C. This improvement in the specific contact resistance indicates that with increase in the sintering temperature, the barrier properties of the contact structure at the interface of the Ag metal and porous silicon structure improved which in turn results a lower specific contact resistance of the contact structure.