Continuous Roll-to-Roll Amorphous Silicon Photovoltaic Manufacturing Technology: Semiannual Subcontract Report, 1 April 1993 - 30 September 1993

This report describes work for this reporting period under a 3-year program to advance Energy Conversion Device's (ECD) roll-to-roll, triple-junction photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing technologies, to reduce the module production costs, to increase the stabilized module performance, and to expand commercial production capacity utilizing ECD technology. The specific 3-year goal is to developadvanced large-scale manufacturing technology incorporating ECD's earlier research advances with the capability of producing modules with stable 11% efficiency at a cost of approximately $1.00 per peak watt. Major accomplishments during this reporting period include (1) the design, construction. and testing of a continuous roll-to-roll multipurpose amorphous silicon alloy solar cell depositionmachine that incorporates improvements necessary to obtain higher efficiency solar cells; (2) development of a photothermal deflection spectroscopy (PDS) technique for evaluating back-reflector systems; (3) the development of an improved textured Ag/ZnO back-reflector system demonstrating 25% gain in Jsc over previous textured AI back-reflector systems; and (4) the design of a serpentine webcontinuous roll-to-roll deposition chamber.