Transport systems for industrial in-line diffusion of silicon solar cells

Up to now for in-line diffusion in solar cell production lines no satisfying transport system has been available. This paper presents the results of the joint project KoTrans. The purpose of this project was the development of an advanced transport mechanism that does not cause wafer contamination and inefficient energy consumption like metal mesh belts do and that is easily implemented in production lines. In the KoTrans project, several transport systems have been tested on a prototype level. The walking string system has been developed to an industrially applicable stage. On mc and Cz silicon efficiencies of 15.0% and 16.6% respectively have been reached.