Solar Cell Efficiency in Relation to Composition and Concentration of Glass Frits in Front Side Silver Pastes

Overview

Various silver pastes of different glass frit compositions and concentrations were prepared in this study to determine the effect of glass frits in front-side pastes on solar cell efficiency. The results first showed the absolute necessity of the glass frit in making front-side silver pastes. It is demonstrated that the inclusion of PbO and TeO2 in glass frits is important in developing silver pastes for high solar cell efficiency. Use of (PbO+TeO2)-containing glass frit in the silver paste yields a multi-crystalline silicon cell efficiency of 17.3% while the PbO-containing glass frit resulted in a cell efficiency of only 10.3%. Moreover, replacing PbO- containing glass frit with Bi2O3- containing glass frit yielded extremely low efficiencies (0.92%). This study further demonstrated that there existed a best (PbO+TeO2)- glass frit concentration at 2.5 wt% which led to the highest solar cell efficiency in this study. As the glass concentration of pastes increased and approached 2.5 wt%, their resulting cells became more efficient. As the glass concentration of pastes further increased beyond 2.5 wt%, their resulting efficiencies decreased. The underlying mechanism behind glass-silver and glass-silicon interactions and their relation to the resulting cell efficiencies is discussed with the aim of developing novel, more efficient silver pastes.

Competition history

• ISEF 2014 Plant Sciences · Entry CH039

Resources

• ISEF abstract page ↗

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