The rapidly expanding photovoltaic solar cell market has the potential to significantly reduce greenhouse emissions when used as a replacement for oil and gas in the production of electricity.  In this market there is strong demand for improved performance and reduced cost, which should enable further market penetration.

Cabot is developing materials for Front Grid Electrodes in crystalline silicon solar cells, which are designed to enable further improvements in cost and efficiency by:

• Improving contact resistance to high sheet resistance emitters
• Improving front grid line resistance
• Reducing shadowing through fine line printing
• Enabling thinner silicon substrates through non-contact printing

 

Cabot provides ultra-fine particles comprising silver and etching glass that can be used for either fine line screen printing or non-contact printing methods such as inkjet and aerosol-jet printing for Front Grid electrodes.

The benefits of these ultra-fine particles include:     

• Small particle size
• Tailored particle surfaces
• Improved dispersion characteristics
• Various particle microstructures
• Intimate mixing of silver and glass compositions
• Enhanced/tailored reactivity
• Controlled melting point and glass transition temperature (sintering)
• Non-leaded frit compositions
• Lower processing temperatures
• Fine line printing