Development and Commercialization of a new measurement system, MAP Series, MP50 that visualizes current density distribution directly connected to photovoltaic efficiency of both crystalline and thin film PV cells * MAP: Mapping System for Photovoltaic Cell
Description
As the world-wide movement against the global greenhouse effect supposed to be caused mainly by CO2 emission, now the most important and pressing issue that could affect the human subsistence, all the nations of the world has begun to contribute more or less to CO2 reduction. The 21st century is said to be the era of environment conservation and various types of movements for realization of low-carbon society are going on. Under such circumstance, photovoltaic generation and photovoltaic cell, the leading technology for alternate energy based on environment-friendly natural resources, are promoted by high expectation and have been achieving rapid development. Although the global economic recession started in autumn last year has been seriously affecting almost all the industries, the photovoltaic generation market is expected to continue its rapid growth for medium/long term from now on, due to worldwide movement toward the low-carbon concept and also due to politically oriented technology promotion in many countries.
Meanwhile, manufacturing cost reduction and photoelectric transfer efficiency of photovoltaic cells are the most important issues for the further prevalence of PV cells, and R&D of relevant technologies is being accelerated.
In view of such technological status, Lasertec has now developed a measurement system MP50 useful for improvement of Photovoltaic cell efficiency.
MP50 is an entirely new tool capable of analyzing and measuring PV cells, non-destructive and with high speed, by visualizing distribution of short circuit current density directly related to conversion efficiency, that is to say efficiency distribution of PV cells.
As a method/tool for inspecting the whole PV cell surface, the EL method/tool has conventionally been used in general. The EL method visualizes the change of open-circuit voltage and the method is effective for detection of the defect or impurity concentration change in crystals. However, defect density and/or impurity concentration do not necessarily correlate with conversion efficiency and the EL method/tool does not have capability to measure electric characteristics related to cell conversion efficiency that intrinsically determines PV cell performance.
In contrast with the above, MP50 is a new tool that speedily measures and visualizes efficiency distribution of short-circuit current density directly correlated with PV cell efficiency and resultantly verifies high and low areas of conversion efficiency, which leads to quality improvement, production process improvement and manufacturing cost reduction of PV cells.
Manufacturing technologies of PV Cells have a common ground with semiconductor and FPD manufacturing technologies and Lasertec's development experience and know-how regarding semiconductor related & FPD related inspection tools and confocal microscopes over the past several decades are effectively utilized for development of MP50.
The substantial supports of Research Center for Advanced Science and Technologies, Tokyo University and The Research Center for Photovoltaics, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (in alphabetical order) on development of MP50 are gratefully acknowledged here.
Key Features
- Visualization of current density distribution in a short period of time
- Light source of 1 sun
- Various optional functions
Applications
- Non-destructive/non-contact inspection and measurement at various processes of PV cell manufacturing
- Identification of areas with high or low conversion efficiencies by efficiency distribution measurement of short circuit current density
Product detail
