Maskless etching using atmospheric pressure non-thermal surface discharge plasma

Abstract

We proposed and examined a maskless plasma surface patterning technique to fabricate 3 mm pitches of front contact grooves on a single crystalline silicon solar cell, in which the surface discharge operated at atmospheric pressure etched the silicon nitride film of 150 nm thickness on a silicon layer. In addition, we investigated etching characteristics of flat surface silicon and the distribution of electric field in our proposed surface discharge etcher. The electrical field distribution of our proposed surface discharge etcher was concentrated at triple junction points, and its strength electrical field intensity was around 4.0 × 106 V/m. Finally, we showed that the surface discharge could effectively etch the silicon nitride film in a 3 mm pitch. © 2010 The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.