Work

Mask and plate copper metallization for silicon heterojunction and perovskite silicon tandem solar cells

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: To cope with the worldwide increasing demand for photovoltaics, it is inevitable for solar cell metallization to switch from scarce silver to abundantly available copper. To this end, this work offers a silver-free and industrially feasible ultra-low-temperature metallization approach called mask and plate. Using this metallization scheme, which is mainly based on inkjet printing of a resist and galvanic metal deposition, pure copper metal electrodes are applied to industrial M6-sized (edge length of 166 mm) silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells' front sides. While the screen-printed reference cells use (6 ± 1) mg W −1 of silver, the mask and plate pendants use (4 ± 2) mg W −1 of copper instead on busbarless half cells' front sides. Due to a width reduction of the electrodes down to (14 ± 2) μm and the electrodes’ low lateral resistivity of (2.0 ± 0.6) μΩ cm, mask and plate outperforms screen printing regarding photoconversion efficiency by 0.6 % abs on average, while silver is completely substituted by copper. This work further demonstrates the applicability of mask and plate copper metallization to 1.21 cm 2 -sized perovskite silicon tandem solar cells without significant damage. It can, thus, be an enabler for silver-free industrial metallization of next-generation solar cells. • Inkjet-printed plating resist featuring ultra-fine openings of down to 10 μm. • Directly electroplated copper electrodes on textured and ITO-covered solar cells. • Highest-efficient perovskite silicon tandem device with galvanic metallization.

Source: Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells

DOI: 10.1016/j.solmat.2025.114055