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Spatial light modulator based laser microfabrication of volume optics inside solar modules

Bernhard Lamprecht, Valentin Satzinger, Volker Schmidt, Gerhard Peharz, and Franz P. Wenzl

Open Access Open Access

Abstract

Ultrashort pulse laser systems enable new approaches of material processing and manufacturing with enhanced precision and productivity. Time- and cost-effectiveness in the context of the industrialization of ultrashort laser pulse processes require an improvement of processing speed, which is of key importance for strengthening industrial photonics based manufacturing and extending its field of applications. This article presents results on improving the speed of a laser process by parallelization for creating light deflecting volume optics. Diffractive optical elements are fabricated directly inside the encapsulant of solar modules by utilizing a spatial light modulator based parallel laser microfabrication method. The fabricated volume optical elements effectively deflect light away from front side electrodes and significantly reduce the corresponding optical losses.

© 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

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Figures (9)
Fig. 1
Fig. 1 Optical setup of the spatial light modulator based holographic laser microfabrication system. After passing the SLM, the light propagates to the back focal plane of an objective through four lenses (L3-L6). The first lens is located about one focal length away from the SLM to perform the Fourier transform.

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Fig. 2
Fig. 2 Laminated industrial solar cell made of crystalline silicon material (area = 156×156 mm2) having screen printed electrodes with a grid finger width of about 100 µm and a spacing of about 2.2 mm.

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Fig. 3
Fig. 3 Diffraction grating as volume optical element above the grid fingers of the solar cells: (a) grayscale bitmap image (256x256 pixels) containing the aimed grating pattern, the pixels of white (2688 pixels) are the positions of the laser spots for one single exposure (b) random 100 pixel fragment taken from the grating structure in (a) as input for the IFTA, (c) 1024x1024 CGH calculated for the random 100 pixel fragment from (b)

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Fig. 4
Fig. 4 Microscopic images of fabricated optical gratings (using the bitmap in Fig. 3 (a) as input) in PDMS: (a) exposure test matrix using exposure frame rates from 1 – 29 Hz in steps of 2 Hz (starting in the upper left corner), (b) close up of the central pattern from (a) exposed with a frame rate of 15Hz

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Fig. 5
Fig. 5 Grating structures (5×5mm2), corresponding to Fig. 4 (b), in the volume of a PDMS block: (a) Diffraction of a He Ne laser beam on the volume structures, indicating clearly the optical behavior of a quadratic diffraction grating, (b) Transmission of the zero order beam and total integrated transmission for a single and double grating structure in PDMS.

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Fig. 6
Fig. 6 A cross sectional sketch of the solar cell test module used for the experiments.

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Fig. 7
Fig. 7 Schematic of the optical microstructures fabrication inside the solar modules by direct femtosecond-laser writing. The volume optical elements are created approximately 120 and 270µm above the grid fingers.

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Fig. 8
Fig. 8 Microscope image (reflection mode), top view to the surface of the solar cell, showing a screen-printed grid finger (front side electrode) running in a horizontal direction. Above this grid finger we fabricated two “double” gratings in the bulk of the EVA encapsulant of the solar module. The double gratings, indicated by the two indicator lines, appears to be “cloaked” which is a result of light being deflected away from the grid finger.

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Fig. 9
Fig. 9 Results of a LBIC measurement: (a) two-dimensional photocurrent map around a solar cell grid finger. Photocurrent measurements corresponding to active solar cell areas (no grid finger) were normalized to 1. The grid finger is found at Y values between 100 and 200µm. The left part of the grid finger (X Distance ~0-120 µm) is covered with a “double” grating structure, the remaining part of the grid finger was used as reference. The measured photocurrent is coded in terms of color (see color bar), (b) photo current line scans across the grid finger, comparing the positions at X = 50µm (grid finger covered with a “double” grating) and X = 167 µm (grid finger without a “double” grating)

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