Laser isolation of shunted regions in industrial solar cells

This paper provides proof of concept for atechnique thatuses laser-ablated grooves to locally isolate shunted regions in industrial silicon solar cells. The shunted regions are located using photoluminescence imaging and then isolated from the active cell area with a Nd:YAG laser. By applying this shunt isolation technique, we demonstrate that a strongly shunted 9� 6% efficient industrial screen-printed solar cell could be recovered to 13� 3%. With further development this technique could be applied in an industrial environment to mitigate yield losses and improve average cell efficiencies. Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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