Metallization is the key step in the production of crystalline silicon solar cells. The photogenerated carriers are led out of the cell by preparing metalized electrodes on the front and the back of the silicon wafer by screen printing and sintering of conductive paste. Solar cell paste is the key material for metallization, accounting for about 50-60% of the non-silicon cost of cells. The paste is made up of conductive phase, binder and organic carrier, includes front-side silver paste, rear-side silver paste and rear-side aluminum paste, has an important influence on the cell’s photoelectric conversion efficiency and cost.
In 2017, China's PV industry maintained its rapid growth with an annual installed capacity of more than 50GW, greatly boosting the development of upstream conductive paste industry. At the same time, crystalline silicon solar cell technologies have rapidly been updated due to the continuous demand for efficiency improvement and pressure to reduce costs, which put forward higher requirements for metallization process and paste.
PERC solar cell requires that paste has a wide sintering process window, lower sintering temperature to avoid LID; PERC rear-side silver paste should not burn through the back-passivation layer, has good tension performance and well match PERC aluminum paste. While reducing the consumption of aluminum paste, bifacial PERC requires increasing the aspect ratio of the aluminum grid line and lowering the volume resistivity. Black silicon cell surface has special nanostructures, demanding silver paste has high tension and can balance contact resistance and open circuit voltage. Heterojunction cell requires low temperature silver paste and preferably stored at room temperature. N-type bifacial cell urgently needs to reduce the consumption of silver paste to control cost.
National “13th FYP” PV industrial plan proposed that by 2020 PV power generation to achieve grid parity. Reducing the consumption of per cell paste, along with the falling price of silicon wafer, are the main driving force to reduce the cell cost.MBB, ultra-fineline metallization technologies help to reduce the consumptionof silver paste; increasing localization rate of front-side silver pastes help cell manufactures to reduce paste cost. In addition, with the mass production of bifacial PERC cells, black silicon cells, n-type bifacial cells and heterojunction cells, the corresponding silver pastes are expected to be shipped in volume in 2018.
4th Solar Cell Paste and Metallization Forum 2018will be held on March 29 in Wuxi Jiangsu, China. The upcoming conference will discuss the global and China’s PV industry outlook and paste market prospect; solar cell metallization technology trends; R&D and application of pastes for advanced high efficiency solar cells; front-side silver pastes localization trends and cost reduction; silver paste and aluminum paste technical progress and investment opportunities; key raw materials production, supply and demand of solar cell pastes, etc.
The notice is as follows：
A．Topics
Global and China’s PV industry outlook and paste market prospect
Advanced paste technologies for PERC, HJT and N-type bifacial cells
MBB cell metallization solutions and ultra-fineline pastes
Knotlessscreen technology and supporting pastes
R&D and application of front-side silver paste for black silicon cell
Screen printing technology improvements and yield enhancement - double printing and dual printing
Ag paste and Al paste localization trends and investment opportunities
Solar cell pastes technology prospect and cost reduction
Quality control system for silver paste and aluminum paste mass production
PV paste key raw materials technologies: silver powder, aluminumpowder, glass powder and organic carriers
Study on solar cell metallization contact and conductive mechanism
Challenges and solutions for copper paste metallization
B. Conference Day：March 29-30, 2018
C. Conference Venue：Sheraton Wuxi Binhu Hotel
D. Registration Date：March 28, 2018 16:00 -21:00
E. For more details, please contact:
Miss Joanna Chen
Tel: +86-21-68726606-109
Cell: +86-13701609248 (same as wechat)
Email: Joanna_chen@chemweekly.com
