Your daily dose of photovoltaic technology developments and solar news

• Popular Technical Papers

  • Overview of automation in the photovoltaic industry
  • Understanding moisture ingress and packaging requirements for photovoltaic modules
  • Evaluation of encapsulant materials for PV applications
  • Inline processing of crystalline silicon solar cells: the holy grail for large-scale manufacturing?
  • PV sector outlook: an analyst’s perspective

• Featured Technical Papers

  • Transparent conducting oxide deposition techniques for thin-film photovoltaics
  • Comprehensive and advanced quality assurance measures for optimal yields from PV power plants
  • Surface passivation of silicon solar cells using industrially relevant Al2O3 deposition techniques
  • Influence of a-Si:H deposition temperature on thermal stability of a-Si:H/SiNx:H stacks
  • Integrated loops: a prerequisite for sustainable and environmentally-friendly polysilicon production

The etching technology currently used in the solar industry is mostly based on wet chemical processing. Plasmaenhanced dry chemical etching at atmospheric pressure is an alternative to the existing technology, especially when combined with similar process technologies, for example plasma-enhanced deposition techniques at atmospheric pressure, to provide a continuous in-line processing of crystalline silicon solar cells. This paper presents the use of plasma chemical etching using Fourier Transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy to monitor different silicon wafer processing steps as an alternative to the widely used wet chemical processing approach.

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