Polycrystalline CdTe thin film mini-modules monolithically integrated by fiber laser

The CdTe thin film technology for photovoltaics (PV) is attractive because of its potential low cost and good performance. In thin film technology the efficiency of large area cells can be maintained if small segments are interconnected in series to reduce the photocurrent and resistance losses. In respect to this, the scribing process is critical for the performance of the device. Today, fiber lasers represent the most advanced and cheap technology that can be used in PV industry to carry out the cuts, needed for themonolithic integration, at different deposition stages. Wewill present our results on the scribing of CdTe thin film solar cells by means of fiber lasers,with pulse duration of a few nanoseconds and solid state lasers in the picosecond regime. The quality of the scribing was evaluated by optical and scanning electron microscopy. Finally, mini-modules with a total area of 10 × 10 cm2 were fabricated, in which the cells were interconnected in series by means of a scribing system, equipped with a fiber laser with the same characteristics of the system mounted on production lines. The mini-modules were characterized by photovoltaic and electrical measurements.