High-volume manufacturing of photovoltaic products

highSol demo project aims to transform innovative manufacturing concepts on a laboratory scale into the full industrial scale, in order to demonstrate technologies that will enable the mass manufacturing of photovoltaic products with a significant reduction in manufacturing costs.

The objectives of the highSol Project:
• demonstrate the automated manufacturing of photovoltaic products based on thin wafers with a thickness of 150 μm and thinner;
• increase and maintain the overall yield with the implementation of in-process quality control and feedback systems;
• illustrate manufacturing integration with the implementation of interfaces which will serve for future standards.

Broken wafer during thin wafer test run

Within highSol, thin wafers (thickness: from 140 μm to 150 μm, size: 156 mm x 156 mm) were tested with state-of-the-art equipment and processes to find the handling, automation and process challenges of the different production steps. Out of this thin wafer test run, several handling and transport steps were identified as the principal stumbling blocks for thin wafer inline and batch production. As a result, three prototype demonstrators were designed to test new handling strategies and find the physical barriers in a first step at laboratory scale.

The first advanced methods of in-line process control were developed and implemented in a test bed with real production data at the manufacturing partners.

Therefore different data loops were obligatory:
• feedback loop: optimise the same process step for the next run;
• feed forward loop: adjust subsequent process steps for same run;
• feed backward loop: modify previous process steps for the next run;
• online loop: adjust the process during processing based on in-situ measurement.
To gather and exchange production data of all processes and equipments, a standardised equipment interface was required. With support of the project, the PV Equipment Interface Specification taskforce was formed in September 2007. Looking at other industries, such as
semiconductor manufacturing, suitable IT interfaces for production equipment have proven to be essential to run factories efficiently and effectively. Data sent and received through these interfaces is not only the prerequisite for line monitoring and control, but also for the implementation of sophisticated quality assurance, traceability and advanced process control strategies.

Initially, the taskforce installed two working groups to assess the requirements of the photovoltaic industry, and review existing IT equipment integration standards and best practices from other industries and the photovoltaic industry. The evaluation process based on the working groups’ results led to the IT integration standard framework developed within the semi-conductor industry.
To facilitate the use of these standards within the photovoltaic industry, the taskforce devised the Guide for PV equipment communication interfaces that describes how to integrate process, automation and metrology equipment in the photo voltaic manufacturing environment.
It contains a number of restrictions and clarifications that should simplify the application of SECS/GEM compared with the original version used in semi-conductor manufacturing. The document has been submitted for balloting and is expected to be available as an approved SEMI standard in 2009. As the next step, the taskforce plans to initiate a new activity to extend the capabilities of the PVECI guide in terms of material tracking.

Future prospects

During highSol, stress-free, faster and reliable handling ad transport of the increasingly thinner and fragile wafers will be demonstrated and analysed. As such, the experiences and results at mass-production scale could be implemented by the manufacturing partners. Besides the automation aspect, an IT framework for the advanced process control will be developed and integrated, for a cost-effective mass manufacturing of solar cells.

Website www.highsol.eu/

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