Self Aligned Cell: Scaling Up Manufacture of a Cost Effective Cell Architecture for Multicrystalline Silicon Photovoltaics: Phase I: 01/30/09 - 12/31/09; Phase II: 01/20/10 - 10/19/10

Two areas of technology for fabrication of higher efficiency Si-wafer solar cells were addressed: (1) the formation of structured texturing that is an improvement over the industry-standard isotexture process for multicrystalline wafers. (2) the formation of fine line (<50 micron) metallization seed layers in a self-aligned manner where the fingers can be automatically and perfectly lined up to aselective emitter and where expensive silver screen printing paste can be mostly replaced by plating up the seed layers with silver or copper. The benefits are: a) Lower reflectivity , b) Decoupling the performance of the texture from the saw damage, thus allowing for better advances in sawing and a more robust wet process. 1366 Technologies developed 2 pilot machines for 1) deposition andpatterning of low-cost resist layers to enable simultaneous Honeycomb front texturing and groove formation for multicrystalline Si wafers, and 2) fine-line dispensing of materials that are self aligned to the grooves.