Method of manufacturing thin film photovoltaic modules
AssigneeBP Corporation North America Inc.
InventorsRobert S. Oswald, Shengzhong Liu
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method for manufacturing a thin film photovoltaic module comprising series connected cells, the cells comprising a front contact, a back contact and a photovoltaically active region positioned between the front and back contacts, the series connected cell being formed by scribing a front contact layer, a photovoltaically active layer and a back contact layer on a substrate, the method comprising laser scribing at least one of the front contact layer, the photovoltaically active layer or the back contact layer to form laser scribes using a laser beam scanned rapidly over the layer.
Claims20
A method for manufacturing a thin film photovoltaic module comprising series connected cells, the cells comprising a front contact, a back contact and a photovoltaically active region positioned between the front and back contacts, the series connected cells being formed by scribing a front contact layer, a photovoltaically active layer and a back contact layer on a substrate, the method comprising laser scribing at least one of the front contact layer, the photovoltaically active layer or the back contact layer to form laser scribes using a laser beam scanned over the layer wherein the front contact layer is scanned with a low-power laser beam to locate the position of the scribes in the front contact layer by measuring the difference in one or more of the transmission, reflection or scattering of the low-power laser beam caused by the scribes in the front contact layer and using the differences measured to position the scribes in one or both of the photovoltaically active and back contact layers.
A method of manufacturing a photovoltaic device on a substrate comprising the steps of:
- (a) depositing a transparent and electrically conductive film on a substrate to form a front contact layer;
- (b) laser scribing first grooves in the front contact layer with a rapidly scanning laser beam to form front contact segments on the substrate;
- (c) depositing and forming a layer or layers of a semiconductor material on said front electrode segments, and filling the first grooves with the semiconductor material;
- (d) laser scribing second grooves in the layer or layers of semiconductor material with a rapidly scanning laser beam at positions adjacent to the first grooves;
- (e) depositing and forming a back contact layer comprising a metal on the layer or layers of semiconductor material, and filling the second grooves with the metal to form a series connection to connect the front electrode segments and the back contact layer;
- and
- (f) laser scribing third grooves in the back contact layer with a rapidly scanning laser beam at positions adjacent to said second grooves wherein the front contact layer is scanned with a low-power laser to locate the position of the first grooves in the front contact layer by measuring the difference in one or more of the transmission, reflection or scattering of the low-power laser beam caused by the first scribes in the front contact layer and using the differences measured to position grooves in the semiconductor material layer or layers, the back contact layer, or the semiconductor material layer or layers and the back contact layer.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.