Experimental investigation towards high throughput rapid thermal firing of EFG SI solar cells

Within the European project FLASH rapid thermal processing (RTP) and equipment for it have been developed over the recent years. A prototype RTP system for very high throughput (> 1 wafer/ s; 10 x 10 cm2) has been finished only after the end of the official project duration and gets currently optimised with respect to temperature homogeneity. Thus the performance potential of such a RTP system had to be assessed in advance prior to the end of the project. This work focuses on the use of Rapid Thermal Firing (RTF) for the metallisation sintering process on EFG Si solar cells. A laboratory single wafer RTP system has been used to assess the influence of temperature inhomogeneity and temperature ramps that might be realistic for the high throughput RTP equipment. Results of these investigations will be presented in this publication.