Solar cell plating line Meco CPL

Meco CPL: More Power Out of Your Cell at a Lower Cost! The Meco CPL is based on the robust and proven concept of the Meco EPL which has, with more than 350 machines installed worldwide, built a reputation in the semiconductor world for leadframe plating applications. Key Features - Vertical product handling - Low drag-out of plating chemicals - Compact machine design/easy to maintain - Inline plating process/high up time - Efficiency improvement: 0.3 - 0.5 % (abs.) with seed-and-plate - Proven machine concept (> 350 machines in semiconductor industry) - Ideal platform for plating of Interdigitated Back Contact (IBC) cells where a thick Cu-Sn layer is plated on the rearside electrode - Ideal platform for plating of HIT cells as Cu plating drastically reduces the high metallization costs associated with heterojunction cells - Plating on frontside and backside at the same time for metallization (plating) of bi-facial cells such as HIT cells - Plating of n-type cells - Process start-up by Meco Details A vast majority of Si cells is produced by screen printing silver paste onto the front side of the wafer. To form electrical contact with the cell emitter a firing step is done afterwards. This is a well established production method within the PV industry although there are areas for further improvement. Typically screen printed contact fingers are printed 90-100 micron wide to obtain sufficient electrical conductance. To further increase the cell efficiency the contact finger width can be reduced as the active area of the cell increases (less shading).