This project developed a cost-effective method to produce high performance heterojunction silicon photovoltaic cells with copper metallization by adapting a dry-resist lamination and high throughput laser scanning exposure toolset, originally developed for the printed circuit board industry, and a high throughput, high resolution plating tool, developed for the semiconductor industry. The innovative manufacturing approach can be transitioned from a pilot-scale (less than 50 wafers per hour and technology readiness level 5) to a high-volume manufacturing scale (technology readiness level 7), with capacity to produce 3300 wafers per hour.
The developed equipment and process will reduce module production costs by 75 percent to $0.41 per watt at a 300 megawatt scale, while improving the cell efficiency by 2 percent and virtually enabling best-in-class cost and performance.
This manufacturing approach could be applied to virtually any type of silicon photovoltaic cell, enabling the broad-scale adoption of copper metallization at lower cost than silver paste.
The highest efficiency achieved in this project for photovoltaic cells with copper-patterning was 24 percent. Tools necessarily for a high-volume manufacturing process were developed and optimized. A detailed cost model confirms the potential of this innovative process to reduce costs by $0.022 per watt compared to the silver-paste process.
