Dual-beam laser thermal processing of silicon photovoltaic materials

We have developed an all-laser processing technique by means of two industrially-relevant continuous-wave fiber lasers operating at 1070 nm. This approach is capable of both substrate heating with a large defocused beam and material processing with a second scanned beam, and is suitable for a variety of photovoltaic applications. We have demonstrated this technique for rapid crystallization of thin film (∼10 μm) silicon on glass, which is a low cost alternative to wafer-based solar cells. We have also applied this technique to wafer silicon to control dopant diffusion at the surface region where the focused line beam rapidly melts the substrate that then regrows epitaxially. Finite element simulations have been used to model the melt depth as a function of preheat temperature and line beam power. This process is carried out in tens of seconds for an area approximately 10 cm² using only about 1 kW of total optical power and is readily scalable. In this paper, we will discuss our results with both c-Si wafers and thin-film silicon.