What is the IBC Technology?

There are many technologies today for manufacturing and structuring the silicon solar cell.

For example, the traditional silicon solar cell, also known as Al-BSF (Aluminum Back Surface Field), is composed of a two-sided silicon layer with a single P-N junction, doped with phosphorus and boron.

You might also have heard of the passive emitter rear contact (PERC) cell technology that addresses transmission losses through the introduction of a dielectric layer.

And finally, there’s a HIT or a heterojunction with an intrinsic thin layer solar cell technology, that focuses on the reduction of recombination losses by adding amorphous layers.

However, in the structuring of solar cells, there are many paths to harness electricity from sunlight. Some are more difficult to manufacture than others, but sometimes they offer tremendous advantages.

That is the case of IBC cells. Let’s take a look at this technology!

How Do IBC Cells Work?

Interdigitated Back Contact (IBC) cells may be one of the most complicated technologies used to fabricate solar panels, but it also offers efficiency values that cannot be ignored, which is why it is considered an important alternative today.

Traditional solar cells achieve energy conversion by placing front contacts in the cell. This means photons that reach the surface of the cell must be absorbed at that moment to release electrons and produce electricity.

If they are not absorbed they are transmitted or reflected. This can be considered a loss.

IBC cells implement a different idea. Instead of placing the contacts in the front of the cell, they place them on its rear side.

This allows them to achieve higher efficiency due to reduced shading on the front of the cell, while at the same time electron-hole pairs generated by the absorbed light can still be collected on the rear side of the cell.

On the illustration below you can take a look at the structure of IBC cells, from a rear side point of view.