High brilliance fiber lasers for the scribing of photovoltaic modules

The aim of this paper is to present the activity related to the development of fiber laser systems for the scribing of photovoltaic modules realized by using two of the most appealing solar cell technologies, that is CdTe and CIS or CIGS based thin films. The activity is carried out by the EU funded ALPINE - Advanced Lasers for Photovoltaic INdustrial processing Enhancement - project. The consortium focuses its work on lasers realized by means of a new generation of optical fibers, that is photonic crystal fibers, which assure high brilliance, high efficiency and premium beam quality. These fiber lasers are intended to optimize all of the three laser scribing steps, called P₁, P₂ and P₃, for both photovoltaic substrate or superstrate configurations of solar cells.