Hydrophobic AlO Surfaces by Adsorption of a SAM on Large Areas for Application in Solar Cell Metallization Patterning.

A resist-free metallization of copper-plated contacts is attractive to replace screen-printed silver contacts and is demonstrated on large-area silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells. In our approach, a self-passivated Al layer is used as a mask during the plating process. In this study, Al/AlO or AlO plating masks are further functionalized by a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) of octadecyl phosphonic acid (ODPA).