ABSTRACT: This work presents recent progress in research on multicrystalline silicon solar cells based on the HIP-MWT concept, a simplified structure for high-performance metal wrap through cells with rear surface passivation. With the simplified approach, no structured rear emitter is required as the rear dielectric acts as an insulating layer to isolate the n-type contacts from the p-type base. The fabricated large-area HIP-MWT solar cells with Al2O3 rear surface passivation and screen-printed contacts show conversion efficiencies of up to 18.2 % (confirmed) and clearly outperform both H-pattern PERC and MWT-BSF reference cells in terms of efficiency. The reverse bias behaviour of the cells is investigated using dark lock-in thermography and reverse current-voltage data.
