Abstract

Light trapping strategies that lead to an enhancement of the light absorbed by a device is a direct way to improve solar cells behavior. Light trapping strategies that lead to an enhancement of the light absorbed by a device is a direct way to improve solar cells behavior. The texturization of one or more surfaces is an industry standard in solar cells manufacturing. In the particular case of crystalline- and multi-crystalline-silicon wafers, this is usually achieved by means of a chemical etching. The control of the final morphology is limited though, especially in multi-crystalline silicon wafers where the etching rate in basic solutions is dependent on the crystal orientation of the silicon grains. The use of laser sources has opened the door to new texturing techniques leading to different kind of morphologies. An example is the use of laser pulses together with chemical etching or the texturization by direct laser scribing [1, 2]. In this work, we study the changes in the incident light reflection of silicon samples when they are textured by direct laser beams and compare them with similar samples textured by standard chemical etching and optimized for its use in silicon heterojunction solar cells.

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