LAUSR

Abstract The temperature and duration of diffusion process were optimized for fabricating nanoscopic silicon based solar cells using design of experiments (DoE) technique. The optimum nano-structure silicon substrate had been etched for 180s and had porosity of 25%, depth of 0.34 μm and diameter of 99.8 nm. Modeling and experimental design were implemented by D-optimal design of experiment with 12 random experiments. The temperature and time parameters were varied at ranges of 810–910 °C and 15–60 min, respectively. The result indicated that the diffused substrate at temperature of 840 °C and time of 60 min had the highest voltage and current-density which were 0.607 V and 24.32 mA/cm 2 , respectively. The reflectance of fabricated optimum solar cell was gaged. The result presented that the reflectance of black silicon solar cell had been 600 times less than the non-porous solar cells using SiN x coated polished surface as antireflection layer. In addition, considerable gains of 13.64% on average efficiency, 0.53 on fill factor, 0.611 V on open circuit voltage and 43.43 mA/cm 2 on current-density were achieved for optimum black silicon solar cell.