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Development of Low-Cost, Crack-Tolerant Metallization for Solar Cells

Osazda Energy is currently developing a low-cost, highly integratable, composite metallization scheme that would maintain greater than 90% of the initial performance of commercial photovoltaic cells in the presence of substrate and metal line fractures. Our engineering solution relies on metal matrix composites that consist of multi-walled carbon nanotubes embedded in silver matrix. We have previously demonstrated that our composite materials can electrically bridge gaps greater than 40 μm in fractured metal lines. The carbon nanotubes also “self-heal” during open and closed gap cycles, which mimic expansion and contraction under extreme thermal cycling. The “self-healed” metal lines reestablish electrical continuity. Building on these results, we are currently developing two device integration paths for our composites on (1) terrestrial Si cells by screen printing and (2) space multi-junction cells by metal electroplating and nanotube spray coating in a layer-by-layer approach. Our initial investigation is focused on how the carbon nanotube loading and the composite microstructure impact the composite electro-mechanical properties and ultimately the cell performance with and without fractures.