Laser Scribing Of Thin-Film Solar Cell Panel

A laser scribing process in the manufacture of thin-film solar panel, the process comprising:

• loading a workpiece with the transparent substrate facing downwards in an input station of a first machine;
• biasing a reference edge of the workpiece against a front and rear stopper associated with a linear drive, wherein the linear drive is operable to translate the workpiece between the input station and an output station;
• translating the workpiece back and forth between the input station and output station and firing two or more laser beams at a first frequency substantially vertically through a space between the input and output stations to pass through the transparent substrate of the workpiece to scribe parallel lines on the front electrodes with reference to the edge of the workpiece in contact with the front and rear stoppers, wherein each said laser beam is outputted from a separate laser source that is mounted on an independently motorized axes, which allows scribed lines to be calibrated accordingly;
• and
• indexing the two or more laser sources at predetermined pitches and repeating the back and forth translation of the work piece between the input and output stations until the entire front electrode is divided into parallel strips that are electrically isolated one from another.

A laser scribing process in the manufacture of thin-film solar panel, the process comprising:

• loading a workpiece with the transparent substrate facing downwards in an input station of a machine;
• biasing the workpiece against a front stopper and a rear adjustable stopper associated with a linear drive;
• wherein the linear drive is operable to translate the workpiece between the input station and an output station;
• aligning a reference line on a reference edge of the workpiece with the linear drive by using a camera (C1-C4) disposed near the front edge of the workpiece and another camera (C5) disposed near the rear adjustable stopper to determine the correction required to achieve parallelism between the reference line and the linear drive;
• translating the workpiece back and forth between the input station and output station and firing two or more laser beams at a first frequency substantially vertically, through a space between the input and output stations, through the transparent substrate of the workpiece to scribe parallel lines on the front electrode;
• wherein each said laser beam is outputted from a separate laser source that is mounted on an independently motorized axes, which allows scribed lines to be calibrated accordingly;
• indexing the two or more laser sources at predetermined pitches and repeating the back and forth translation of the work piece between the input and output stations until the entire front electrode is divided into parallel strips that are electrically isolated one from another;
• aligning a scribed line (Lp1) on the front electrode with the linear drive by using the camera (C1-C4) disposed near the front edge of the workpiece and the another camera (C5) disposed near the rear adjustable stopper to determine the correction required to achieve parallelism;
• translating the workpiece back and forth between the input station and Output station and firing two or more laser beams at a second frequency substantially vertically, through a space between the input and output stations, through the transparent substrate of the workpiece to scribe parallel lines (Lp2, Lp3) on the semiconductor layer or rear electrode;
• wherein each said laser beam is outputted from a separate laser source;
• and
• indexing the two or more laser sources and repeating the back and forth translation of the work piece between the input and output stations until the entire semiconductor layer or rear electrode is divided into parallel strips that are electrically isolated one from another.