Low-cost selective deposition of wax onto textured solar cells

The active regions of a solar cell must be inoculated with wax, while leaving the metal fingers and bus bars bare, in preparation for the electroplating step of a new solar panel manufacturing process. Different methods to achieve the inoculation of the cell are discussed, along with their advantages and disadvantages. A proposed solution is presented, along with results from test runs. The methods use a new feature of solar cells-microscopic, light-trapping textures-to passively wick the liquid wax to the extents of the regions through capillarity. Using this self-aligning feature of the cell texture, a low-cost delivery device was designed to bring liquid wax beads to within close proximities of the surface, without requiring high-precision equipment. The prototype uses an array of pins of diameter 1 mm, each of which beads a repeatable amount of wax on its head (- 0.1 mg), to transport the liquid wax from reservoir to cell texture. No metal-to-wafer contact is done in the process. The design has been used as a basis to create a machine at the Photovoltaics Laboratory (PV Lab). Successful inoculation of monocrystalline solar cells has been achieved using the proposed method.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Páez, Daýan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Emanuel Sachs.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/62994

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/62994