Laser Texturing of Surfaces in Thin-Film Silicon Photovoltaics - A Comparison of Potential Processes

Thin-film silicon solar cells contain textured interfaces in order to optimize light incoupling and light trapping. Laser-based texturing processes can offer a high degree of freedom concerning the adaptability of textures, therefore allowing controllable light management. In this article, four commonly known laser-based processes are adapted to texturing aluminium-doped zinc-oxide for the use as a front contact in thin-film silicon solar cells. They are compared considering the achievable textures as well as the industrial applicability of the process concerning scalability, throughput and simplicity. The patterning by the formation of laser induced periodical surface structures (LIPSS) proved to be a very simple way of achieving feature sizes on the right order of magnitude, whereas interference patterning offers a large variety of textures.