Optimizing solar cell metallization by parallel dispensing

Dispensing of metal pastes shows impressive performance and promises higher throughput with lower metal laydown than screen printing. Given the market introduction planned for latest 2024, and with the objective to fully automate the metallization process, an in-line visual control and inspection unit is being developed. Utilizing this tool, process time and paste laydown was reduced by another 10 % and 20 % respectively, after optimization within four consecutive cells only. Consequently, recent cell results on industrial precursor SHJ showed an increased efficiency by +0.4 %_"abs“ while having a reduction in paste usage of 40 %, compared to the screen printing reference. In this paper, we outline the path of development with a focus on first results with this new digital tool that has the potential to lift future PV metallization to a completely automated production state with higher performance, yield values and lower downtimes.