**6. Conclusions and outlook**

Pulsed laser processing provides two routes for effective photon management: Surface texture and hyper doping process are distinct and independently achievable. Surface texture using intense pulsed-laser light to create quasi-periodic surface features reduces reflection and increases path length through the material.

The creation of femtosecond laser irradiated thin film silicon solar cells is an exciting area of research. Thin-film solar cell requires a highly efficient lighttrapping design to absorb a significant fraction of the incident sunlight and material property changes to increase stability. Laser based treatment of thin-film is required for resolve efficiency and stability issues in a one-step process, which is a promising methodology for thin-film solar cell fabrication. Laser with a shorter, femtosecond pulse duration will be applied for nano-structuring of TCO deposited on glass as a plasmonic-nanostructure for efficient light trapping. The ultra-short pulse of femtosecond laser at small fluences will also overcome the parasitic losses and decreased electrical power output of the solar module resulting from the active material remaining over the active layer scribing with picosecond laser of thin-film solar cells which is critical in forming the series interconnects between cells.

**433**

**Author details**

Jhantu Kumar Saha\* and Animesh Dutta

provided the original work is properly cited.

School of Engineering, University of Guelph, Canada

\*Address all correspondence to: jsaha@uoguelph.ca

© 2021 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

*Advanced Laser Processing towards Solar Cells Fabrication*

Thin-film materials eg. Si, CdTe, CuInSe2 are becoming more and more attractive based on their potential for low-cost solar modules, possibly to create tandem junctions and large-scale manufacturing. They can reduce the cost of the material at the expense of efficiency. The a-Si:H is the most popular material for use in thin film form due to its low energy economy (watt/cost). But due to their instability and low efficiency, a thin-film a-Si:H solar cell requires a highly efficient light-trapping design to absorb a significant fraction of the incident sunlight and material property changes to increase stability. On the other hand, microcrystalline silicon is one of the promising materials for thin-film solar cells of achieving high conversion efficiency. In addition, microcrystalline silicon films show enhanced carrier mobility, excellent stability against light-induced degradation and improved

longer wavelength response. But deposition rate of microcrystalline silicon thin-film fabricated by conventional PECVD is lower compared with the a-Si:H. Therefore, laser-based treatment of a-Si:H is required to resolve its efficiency and stability issues in a one-step process, which is a promising methodology for

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.94583*

thin-film solar cell fabrication.
