Handling and Encapsulating Billions of Sliver SOLAR cells at Low Cost

SLIVER® solar cells are thin, mono-crystalline silicon solar cells fabricated using standard semiconductor processing and solar cell fabrication technology. SLIVER solar power modules, comprising several thousand individual SLIVER cells, can be efficient, low cost, bifacial, transparent, flexible, shadow-tolerant, and lightweight. Compared with current conventional PV technology, mature SLIVER Technology will need less than 10% of the pure silicon, and fewer than 5% of the wafer starts per MW of factory output. Once wafer processing is complete, the individual SLIVER cells must be extracted from the host wafer, assembled and electrically interconnected into solar power modules. We have devised methods to immobilise each SLIVER cell while the peripheral portions of the host wafer are removed. The block of SLIVER cells, once removed from the host wafer, is conflated and stored in a cassette for later use. These two processes can be performed rapidly at low cost. A 100 MW SLIVER factory will produce several billion individual SLIVER cells annually. We have developed a sub-module assembly approach for rapid, reliable, low-cost production of arrays of SLIVER cells to form two main types of conventional solar cell analogues that, because of their appearance, we call “Rafts” and “Sheets”. Using our invention, Rafts and Sheets can be reliably produced at high speed using low-cost equipment and entirely conventional materials. Once formed, Rafts and Sheets can be mechanically handled, and assembled into solar power modules, using simple adaptations of conventional solar cell handling and stringing equipment.