SILICON INK HIGH EFFICIENCY SOLAR CELLS

Innovalight has developed the Cougar (TM) Process, a method for making a high efficiency solar cell on a Cz-Si wafer with a proprietary Silicon Ink. With the use of an industrial inkjet printer, an n-type ink is deposited on a p-type silicon wafer in order to form a high efficiency selective emitter. The Cougar Process requires only an incremental modification to a conventional front-contact solar cell manufacturing configuration, necessitating only the addition of the inkjet printer system. Consequently, the Cougar Process improves the efficiency of standard screen printed solar cells by about 1% absolute at a manufacturing cost similar to that of a conventional front-contact solar cell. As of the publication date of this paper, a best cell efficiency of 18% has been achieved on a 125mmx125mm pseudo square wafer.