Using Fiber Lasers to Process Thin-Film Solar Cells

The solar industry as a whole has been looking at different opportunities to reduce the cost per watt of solar panel cells to make solar energy more cost efficient. Currently thin-film solar cells seem to be the most cost effective way to eliminate demand on limited fossil fuels. Many companies have reported $2.50/watt, others say that they can bring down the per watt cost to close to the one dollar mark. To become competitive, the cost per watt needs to be reduced to less than one dollar.

Current industry leaders are looking at fiber lasers to help make the one dollar per watt mark a near future reality. There are three major areas fiber lasers are reducing production costs of thin-film solar panels.

• Fiber lasers would be used to scribe through the various unaligned thin-film layers on glass or flexible substrates with high speed precision and less energy consumption than current methods. Fiber lasers offer the industry needed precision and control and allows solar cell manufacturers the ability to scribe through the thin-film layers without penetrating the substrate allowing for higher efficient manufacturing.

• Currently the thin-film devices are produced in very large sizes, approximately 1 meter square. These large thin film devices can be divided into 200 smaller electrically connected series. This subdivision and patterning would occur after each layer is deposited. Fiber laser systems are designed to control the depth of each scribe and create higher yields resulting in less waste. With the glass substrates as the base, fiber laser systems will also be able to take advantage of the substrate transparency and scribe from the rear.

• Fiber lasers can be used to mark the solar cells with alpha-numeric’s, barcodes and 2-D matrix to help track the solar cell and panels through its process. This is going to be a very important part of the entire solar industry and only fiber lasers will be able to mark these cells with the speed and efficiency needed.

The fast growing solar and fiber laser industries seem to be the perfect match for each other. The solar industry is trying to reduce the cost of creating solar panels while increasing energy and fiber laser systems are the most cost and energy efficient solution.