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Abstract

Wafer-based solar cells are efficiently produced by extruding a dopant bearing material (dopant ink) onto one or more predetermined surface areas of a semiconductor wafer, and then thermally treating the wafer to cause diffusion of dopant from the dopant ink into the wafer to form corresponding doped regions. A multi-plenum extrusion head is used to simultaneously extrude interdigitated dopant ink structures having two different dopant types (e.g., n-type dopant ink and p-type dopant ink) in a self-registered arrangement on the wafer surface. The extrusion head is fabricated by laminating multiple sheets of micro-machined silicon that define one or more ink flow passages. A non-doping or lightly doped ink is co-extruded with heavy doped ink to serve as a spacer or barrier, and optionally forms a cap that entirely covers the heavy doped ink. A hybrid thermal treatment utilizes a gaseous dopant to simultaneously dope exposed portions of the wafer.

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First Claim