Patent ID: 8288193

Claim:
A method of manufacturing a selective emitter solar cell, the method comprising: (a) obtaining a barrier pattern on a first surface of a substrate, wherein said barrier pattern is made of silicon nitride to obtain an exposed region of said substrate; (b) doping a dopant from a dopant source into said substrate through said barrier pattern to obtain a lightly-doped region and a heavily-doped region, wherein said lightly-doped region has a doping type opposite to that of said substrate; and is obtained at a region covered by said silicon nitride and outside said exposed region of said substrate, wherein said heavily-doped region has a doping type opposite to that of said substrate; and is obtained at said exposed region of said substrate not covered by said silicon nitride, and wherein the doping concentration of said heavily-doped region is larger than that of said lightly-doped region and smaller than the solubility limit of said dopant in said substrate to obtain a p-n junction; (c) removing said barrier pattern; and (d) obtaining a front contact electrically connected to said substrate at said heavily-doped region; and a back contact electrically connected to said substrate at a second surface of said substrate opposite to said first surface of said substrate, wherein photocurrent is outputted through coordination of said front contact and said back contact; wherein, in step (a), said substrate contains silicon; a silicon nitride layer is obtained on said first surface of said substrate through nitrification; wherein said silicon nitride layer is patterned to obtain said barrier pattern, wherein, in step (a), a region of said silicon nitride layer is removed to obtain an exposed region on said substrate and thus obtain said barrier pattern; and then, said substrate is further removed to a certain depth from a surface of said exposed region to obtain a plurality of trenches not covered by said silicon nitride; wherein, in step (b) said dopant is doped into said substrate from said dopant source to form a heavily-doped region at the trench area and a lightly-doped region at the region covered by said silicon nitride; and wherein, in step (d), a conductive material is filled into said trenches to obtain said front contact.