An annealing procedure designed to improve the performance of Fe-contaminated Si solar cells was proposed and demonstrates. The idea was advanced that cells contaminated with Fe should be annealed at appropriate times and temperatures to allow for the transformation from supersaturated point defects to distributed iron silicide precipitates. The optimum transformation rate for string ribbon multicrystalline Si was examined and it was demonstrated that 0.5h annealing could improve the efficiency of cells manufactured from low-purity feedstock.

Iron Point Defect Reduction in Multicrystalline Silicon Solar Cells. M.D.Pickett, T.Buonassisi: Applied Physics Letters, 2008, 92[12], 122103