Laser isolation of shunted regions in industrial solar cells

This paper provides proof of concept for a technique that uses 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 (C) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.