US Patent 7563722 - Nanotexturing of multicrystalline silicon

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7563722.html

This patent from Applied Nanotech teaches a way to increase the efficiency of multicrystalline silicon solar cells by using nanoparticles to enhance the texture of the silicon surface. Claim 1 reads:

1. A method for texturing a surface of a multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) substrate, comprising the steps of:

applying a layer of nano-sized particles onto the surface of the mc-Si substrate; and

bombarding the surface of the mc-Si substrate with plasma ions over a period of time so that the plasma ions that pass through openings in the layer of nano-sized particles etch the surface of the mc-Si substrate more substantially than the surface of the mc-Si substrate lying beneath the nano-sized particles resulting in a texturing of the surface of the mc-Si substrate to thereby increase light scattering properties of the mc-Si substrate, wherein the nano-sized particles comprise fullerenes.