Electroless nickel metallization on textured front surface is carried out to fabricate large area (13%) efficient silicon solar cells. It is established through XPS analysis that NiSi is formed at the front grid contact on the texturized surface at relatively low temperature leading to a low value of series resistance of the solar cells.

Porous silicon (PS) was formed on both polished and texturized single crystal silicon (100) by anodic etching. Photoluminescences (PL) from both of these silicon surfaces were measured and compared. A two-fold enhancement of PL from textured silicon surface was obtained. This enhancement could be ascribed to the geometry of the textured surface.

A simple extension of Beale’s and Lehmann’s models for the formation of porous silicon layer onp-type silicon is proposed with a view to explain the experimental conditions necessary for obtaining either uniform vertical pores or non-uniform pore branching, as desired. A uniformity parameter is defined and correlated with the measured porosity. The dependence of the porosity and the uniformity factor with the various formation parameters of porous layer are studied experimentally and explained qualitatively.