Oerlikon Solar LSS 1200 System

Description

The LSS1200 laser scribing equipment has been developed for industrial production of thin-film solar modules. High volumes of LSS1200 systems (>50) have been shipped for thin-film panel scribing and have been in volume production as part of an end-to-end line in numerous of Oerlikon's customer fabs for over a year.
The laser scribing for the P1, P2 and P3 patterns are performed on the same industrial tool platform. The tool has fully automated processing with vision alignment systems for high precision positioning of the laser scribes. Panel temperature compensation and scribe positioning algorithms enable extremely good scribe placement accuracy despite changes in fab conditions. The panel scribe patterns are changeable by recipe for customer optimization and by the simultaneous scribing of multiple lines in one pass of the panel the tool also achieves high processing speeds.
Continuous improvement of the tool platform has lead to a significant increases in the available panel area for useful power generation and overall process optimizations have resulted in power gains of up to 4% per module in industrial production environments with >95% uptime.

Innovative Aspect

Oerlikon Solar has addressed the integration issues faced with laser scribing with multiple processes on multiple tools in a volume end-to-end production line.
The complex design of high precision positioning systems with typical measured repeatabilities of +/-3um are used for panel and laser beam positioning coupled with the accurate vision positioning systems allow scribe patterns to be positioned accurately on the panel. The panel temperature compensation and scribe positioning algorithms coupled with this high accuracy allow the laser scribes to be placed in close proximity to the previously scribed patterns. The net result is a very low 'dead band' introduced by the laser scribe interconnects between the cells, resulting in increase output power from the panels. Optimization of the software algorithms for high speed and the tuning of the laser processes within the production line have enabled high throughputs to be achieved in the production environment at this level of high precision. The main innovations in the design are the high precision architecture, panel temperature and scribe positioning algorithms coupled with the high speed processing.

Benefits

The robustness of the tool design has enabled uptime to be consistently demonstrated at levels greater than 95% for end-to-end production environments. In addition, the fast processing rate and high throughput of the tool coupled with the high precision of the scribing provide considerably reduced cost of ownership for the laser scribing processes in end-to-end lines. The panel power gains from increased area are significant, of the order of 4% for amorph panels and 2.5% for micromorph® panels on the Oerlikon Solar 1100mm x1300mm size.