A comparative study of wet and dry texturing processes of c-Si wafers for the fabrication of solar cells

A comparative study of texturing c-Si wafers using wet and dry processes has been performed in this work; our aim was to produce pyramid-like structures on c-Si surfaces with low reflectance values, employing any of both processes. For wet texturing solutions consisting of potassium hydroxide (KOH) or sodium hydroxide (NaOH), combined with deionized water (DI H₂O) and isopropyl alcohol (IPA) were used, while for dry texturing sulfur hexafluoride/oxygen (SF₆/O₂) plasmas in a standard Reactive Ion etching (RIE) were employed. Our results demonstrated that RIE texturing produces highly textured c-Si surfaces, with pyramid-like structures, providing even lower reflectance values than those obtained with wet processes, which are currently used in the solar cells manufacturing industry.