Damage and breakage of silicon wafers during impact loading on the wafer edge

The reduction of the breakage rate during the production of solar cells is still a big issue in order to save costs. During manufacturing different handling steps are applied which leads to different kind of dynamical loadings, while the wafer edge seems to be one of the most vulnerable parts of the wafer. In this work the local impact loading at the wafer edge was investigated by experimental and numerical methods. Due to impact loading a local bending phenomenon was observed, which can lead to high tensile stress and damage in terms of microcrack propagation near the contact area.