Cu-tråd som elektrisk ledare i CIGS-tunnfilmssolceller för att sänka silvermängden utan att förlora verkningsgrad

Abstract: The solar industry is bigger than ever and continues to grow while competition between the solar cell manufacturers is increasing. This is something that has lowered the prices of solar cells and reduces the profitability for manufacturers. This thesis aims to lower the cost of production without losing efficiency by using copper wires as conductors in CIGS thin film solar cells. Silver paste is printed on the surface on the solar cell and represents 1/5 of the cell manufacturing costs. That is why this project focuses on how to lower the amount of silver in the solar cell without losing efficiency, this is a hands-on project. The work is done by improving the solar cell with implementation of own ideas and innovations. This is made by taking advantage of the benefits of copper wires and by changing the solar cell pattern. The results showed that one can reduce the amount of silver paste by up to 70% in each solar cell by producing a new silver print with much less silver. The silver-coated copper wires gave the highest results as conductors to lead out electricity from the surface because they can be made much thinner than today's solar cells conductors and obscure the surface less. This gave efficiencies of 10-11% which is in line with the production solar cells modules on Midsummer. The system has also been proved stable.