Application of power loss calculation to estimate the specific contact resistance of the screen-printed silver ohmic contacts of the large area silicon solar cells

The establishment of a suitable contact formation methodology is a critical part of the technological development of any metal-to-semiconductor contact structure. Many test structures and methodologies have been proposed to estimate the specific contact resistance (ρ_c) of the planar ohmic contacts formed on the heavily doped semiconductor surface. These test structures are usually processed on the same wafer to monitor a particular process. In this study, new experimental procedure has been evolved to assess the value of ρ_c of the screen-printed front silver (Ag) thick-film metal contact to the silicon surface. The essential feature of this methodology is that it is an iteration technique based on the calculation of power loss associated with various resistive components of the solar cell normalized to the unit cell area. Therefore, this method avoids the complexity of making the design of any lay out of a standard contact resistance test structure like transmission line model (TLM) or Kelvin resistor, etc. It was shown that value of specific contact resistance of the order of 1.0 × 10⁻⁵ Ω−cm ² is measured for the Ag metal contacts formed on the n⁺ silicon surface. This value is much lower than the ρ_c data previously reported for the screen-printed Ag contacts. The sintering process of the front metal contact structure at different furnace setting is carried out to understand the possible wet interaction and metal contact formation as a function of the firing. Therefore, the study is further extended to study the peak firing temperature dependence of the ρ_c of screen-printed Ag metal contacts. It will help to assess the specific contact resistance of the ohmic contacts as a function of firing temperature of sintering process.