Streamlined Module Manufacturing Using Back Contact Solar Cells and Conducting Adhesives

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This project will fabricate modules of back contact silicon solar cells by patterning metal onto the module backsheet or back glass and attaching unmetallized cells to it using a conducting adhesive. The conducting adhesive will consist of conductive microspheres embedded in an adhesive and will conduct only in the out-of-plane direction, allowing patterned doped areas on the rear side of an unmetallized back contact solar cell to be conductively bonded to a patterned metal on a backsheet/back glass without patterning the adhesive. This eliminates the complex cell metallization and stringing steps, replacing them with a single metal patterning step on a backsheet/back glass. The cell metallization step would concurrently be the first module assembly step, resulting in lower module cost.