Analysis of series resistance of crystalline silicon solar cell with two-layer front metallization based on light-induced plating

Improving the front metallization quality of silicon solar cells should be a key to enhance cell performance. In this work, we investigated a two-layer metallization scheme involving light-induced plating (LIP) and tried to quantify its impact on the series resistance of the front grid metals and FFs on finished cells. To estimate the effect of LIP processing on a printed and fired seed layer, individual components of series resistance were measured before and after LIP processing. Among them, grid resistance and contact resistance were closely observed because of their large contribution to series resistance. To optimize the plating on the seed metal grid, the grid resistance of the two-layer metal grid structure was calculated as a function of cross section area of the plated layer. Contact resistivity of the grid before and after LIP processing was analyzed to understand the contact resistance reduction, as well. As a result, the efficiency of solar cells with 80 μm seed metal grid width increased by 0.3% absolute compared with conventional solar cells of 120 μm metal grid width. The total area of electrodes in conventional cells was 1800 mm² and electrodes area of LIP processed solar cells was 1400 mm². The efficiency gain was due to reduction of shadowing loss from 7.7% to 6.0% without the increase of resistance due to two-layer front metallization.