Towards an industrial in-line solution for efficient post-treatment of silicon heterojunction solar cells

Light exposure is widely known to enhance the performance of amorphous/crystalline silicon heterojunction (HJT) solar cells and modules. Recently, in an attempt to integrate such effect during cell production, processes involving intense illumination densities were reported. In this work, we develop a fast post-treatment on solar cells from Enel Green Power (EGP), using a LED-based tool specifically designed for HJT cells by Applied Materials and CEA. We investigate key aspects that such post-treatments should fulfil to be a relevant option in industry, including the amplitude of the gain, its stability under extended dark storage, its transferability to the module, and the influence of the post-treatment on the module reliability. Eventually, we also assess other potential side-benefits of the developed post-treatment, such as its influence on the efficiency distribution and on the yield of a fabrication line, as well as its robustness with respect to typical cell evolutions.