The total amount of electric energy from photovoltaic sources is more than 250 terawatt hours, approximately equivalent to the amount produced by 30 nuclear power plants, and this is set to rise.
Today most solar cells are equipped with a wide-surface metallic contact, covering the entire backside of the silicon wafer and allowing electricity to flow from the cell to the electrode. This configuration however limits efficiency. A more high-performance alternative, discovered in 1989, is the Passivated Emitter and Rear Cell technology (PERC). In contrast to conventional cells, this technology includes an additional reflective layer on the backside of the cell and thousands of electric contact points. The LFC process developed by the Fraunhofer researchers has enabled the first industrial mass production of PERC solar cells.
A very thin non-conductive layer is deposited on the underside of a PERC solar cell between the contact layer and the wafer. Acting as a mirror, this layer reflects the share of sunlight not absorbed when penetrating the wafer back into the silicon wafer. Since the front side also reflects this light back into the wafer, it is also captured in the silicon wafer and the efficiency level of the solar cell increases. Drawing the electricity from the wafer requires many small apertures in the non-conductive layer in order to establish contact between the electrode metal and the silicon wafer.
The LFC procedure creates each of these approximately 100,000 contacts per wafer with a single laser pulse. The challenge was to coordinate the pulses in such a way that contact is completely established, while damage to the silicon is kept to minimal levels. Here it‘s crucial that the laser light effect is limited to between 50 and 2,000 nanoseconds.
