Effectively transparent electrical contacts for thermally sensitive solar cells

High conductivity silver pastes are usually incompatible for use with thermally sensitive devices due to their higher sintering temperatures while nanoparticle inks are costly and undergo high particle agglomeration. Effectively transparent contacts (ETCs) have been designed to increase the transmittance, reduce reflectance and overcome shadowing losses in solar cells while enhancing the overall conductivity and charge collection through the grid. In this study, reactive silver ink (RSI) is mixed with a low temperature sintering conductive silver paste (150 °C) for deposition via a microchannel approach. ETCs deposited using the resulting composite were cured at a lower temperature (100 °C) with a conductivity of the order of 10 3 1/Ω-cm and a transparency >90% in the visible region, promising a reduction in optical and electrical losses when compared to bare transparent conductive oxides. The use of low temperature curing conductive material makes ETCs suitable for use in thermally sensitive optoelectronic and photovoltaic devices, hence they were ultimately deposited on perovskite solar cells and the solar cell parameters were measured. • Effectively transparent contacts deposited at low curing temperatures (100 °C) are suitable for thermally sensitive devices. • ETCs offer improved transparency (>90%), high aspect ratio and high conductivity (10^3 1/Ω-cm). • This design mitigates parasitic absorption, reflection and shading losses. • Compositional variations of Reactive Silver Ink were tested to study compatibility with microfluidic approach. • Realization of effectively transparent contacts on perovskites solar cells to explore device performance.