Canon Kabushiki Kaisha

Nisshin Steel Co., Ltd.

Hisashi Matsune

Masafumi Sano

Takuji Okiyama

Yasushi Nishimura

The stainless steel sheet useful as a substrate for non-single crystalline semiconductor solar cells has minute ripples with undulations along a rolling direction, and its surface roughness is controlled in the range of R.sub.z 0.3-1.4 .mu.m and R.sub.max 0.5-1.7 .mu.m. It is manufactured by finish cold rolling a stainless steel strip with a reduction ratio of at least 20% at a rolling speed of at least 400 m/min. using work rolls polished with abrasives of gage #100-#400 at a final pass, annealing the rolled strip in an open-air atmosphere and then electrolytically pickling the annealed strip in a nitric acid solution. Since minute ripples with undulations are formed on the surface of the stainless steel sheet, an energy conversion efficiency is increased by acceleration of scattering and multiple reflection of incident light rays projected into a non-single crystalline semiconductor layer.

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Tokyo, Japan

Hisashi Matsune