Metal Complex Ink Screen-Printing for Low-Cost III-V Solar Metallization

III-V solar cells are highly efficient and reliable, however, they prove cost-prohibitive for many applications. Low-cost metallization strategies, such as screen-printing, represent a key opportunity to reduce cell costs, however conventional silver pastes are incompatible with III-V solar materials. Here we present two sets of III-V solar cells processed using a silver complex screen-printing ink: a set processed with screen-printed back contact and electroplated gold front contacts and a set processed with an electroplated gold back contact and screen-printed front contacts. For the cells processed with the screen-printed back contacts, we see a short circuit current density equivalent to baseline but observe some evidence of material degradation. In contrast, for the cells with screen-printed front contacts, we see no evidence of material degradation but do observe a drop in short circuit current density. We expect that additional print and process optimization will improve the cell performance in both cases and enable low-cost metallization for III-V solar.