Technological and economic assessment of two-steps printing processes in a mc-Si solar cells production environment

The possibility of obtaining economic benefits out of two-step printing processes is still a matter of debate for the industry. This is due to both the evolution of the single printing process and to the superimposition of many technological and economic variables. In the present work we analyze production cost and cell performance benefits achieved in a mc-Si solar cells production environment. Three different screen technologies are compared; we find that for all of them the finger aspect ratio is improved with respect to the single print baseline. An efficiency gain of approximately 0.1 absolute is also found. The overall performance of the double printing technology in terms of €/Wp is evaluated taking into account the efficiency gain, the screen lifetime and cost, the Ag consumption and the additional costs due to labor and equipment depreciation. The three screen technologies offer savings ranging from 0.4% to 1.4% of the total production costs.