Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) and wet etching are employed in existing texturing processes to fabricate solar cells. Laser etching is used for particular purposes such as selective etching for grooves. However, such processes require a higher level of cost and longer processing time and those factors affect the unit cost of each process of fabricating solar cells. As a way to reduce the unit cost of this process of making solar cells, an atmospheric plasma source will be employed in this study for the texturing of crystalline silicon wafers. In this study, we produced the atmospheric plasma source and examined its basic properties. Then, using the prepared atmospheric plasma source, we performed the texturing process of crystalline silicon wafers. The results obtained from texturing processes employing the atmospheric plasma source and employing RIE were examined and compared with each other. The average reflectance of the specimens obtained from the atmospheric plasma texturing process was 7.88 %, while that of specimens obtained from the texturing process employing RIE was 8.04 %. Surface morphologies of textured wafers were examined and measured through Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and similar shapes of reactive ion etched wafers were found. The Power Conversion Efficiencies (PCE) of the solar cells manufactured through each process were 16.97 % (atmospheric plasma texturing) and 16.29% (RIE texturing).
Atmospheric pressure plasma is used in the biological and medical fields. Miniaturization and safety are important in the application of apply atmospheric plasma to bio devices. In this study, we made a small, pocket-sized inverter for the discharge of atmospheric plasma. We used pulse power to control the neutral gas temperature at which the, when plasma was discharged. We used direct current of 5 V of bias(voltage). The output voltage is about 1 to 2 kilo volts the frequency is about 80 kilo hertz. We analyzsed the characteristics of the atmospheric plasma using OES(Optical emission spectroscopy) and the Current-Voltage characteristic of pulse power. By calculating of the current voltage characteristics, we were able to determine that, when the duty ratio increased, the power that actually effects the plasma discharge also increased. To apply atmospheric plasma to human organisms, the temperature is the most important factor, we were able to control the temperature by modulating the pulse power duty ratio. This means we can use atmospheric plasma on the human body or in other areas of the medical field.