Current Photovoltaic Research ISSN:2288-3274(Print) 2508-125X(Online)

The dependency of the electrical characteristics of silicon solar-cells on the depth of damaged layer induced by wire-sawing process was investigated. To compare cell efficiency with residual sawing damage, silicon solar-cells were fabricated by using as-sawn wafers having different depth of saw damage without any damaged etching process. The damaged layer induced by wire-sawing process in silicon bulk intensely influenced the value of fill factor on solar cells, degrading fill factor to 57.20%. In addition, the photovoltaic characteristics of solar cells applying texturing process shows that although the initial depth of saw-damage induced by wire-sawing process was different, the value of short-circuit current, fill-factor, and power-conversion-efficiency have an almost same, showing ~17.4% of cell efficiency. It indicated that the degradation of solar-cell efficiency induced by wire-sawing process could be prevented by eliminating all damaged layer through sufficient pyramid-surface texturing process.