| Abstract: | Screen‐print diffusion pastes present an industrially applicable alternative to conventional techniques of dopant deposition. Several commercially available screen‐print dopant pastes are assessed for their suitability in forming heavy selective diffusions for use under metal contacts in silicon solar cells. Pastes are assessed in terms of their ease of application, their ability to form heavy diffusions with low sheet resistances, and their ability to maintain high post‐diffusion wafer lifetimes. Potential for the use of dopant pastes in high‐efficiency solar cell devices is investigated using photoconductance (PC) measurements and photoluminescence (PL) images. It is found that under certain conditions, screen‐print dopant pastes, particularly phosphorus paste, have potential to form effective selective diffusions without significantly compromising performance in high‐efficiency solar cells. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
