抄録
A buried contact is one of effective techniques to improve the efficiency of solar cells. However, the etching of the patterned front contact on the surface of a solar cell is required. Therefore, we proposed a maskless etching technique using the surface discharge plasma operated at atmospheric pressure. The streamer-like discharge channels, which ignited near a triple junction point between the quartz glass layer, the solar cell, and the gas space, played an essential role in the etching. The etching rate of a silicon solar cell of which the surface had randomly distributed pyramid-like structures, was in the range of 3 - 5 μm /min when the applied voltage was 4.0 kV.
