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Lithography-free mesa isolation of multijunction III-V solar cells through laser ablation
Gray, AJ
Gray, AJ
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2025
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Gray_mines_0052N_13052.pdf
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- Embargoed until 2026-11-11
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2026-11-11
Abstract
Eliminating photolithography from solar cell processing is a significant opportunity for cost reduction for III-V solar cells. In this work, we test femtosecond laser ablation and scribing as an alternative to contact photolithography and wet chemical etching for mesa isolation, when processing multijunction cells. We demonstrate that upright multijunction solar cells isolated by using the laser as a scribe to cleave through the substrate had virtually no performance loss when compared to a baseline cell processed with photolithography. By contrast, cells isolated by laser ablating through the active layers have performance losses that cannot be fully eliminated with post-processing etches. So far no laser mesa isolation methods have been viable for producing inverted solar cells with good performance characteristics, though further exploration into this subject is being made. This demonstration of photolithography-free mesa isolation with no performance losses is promising for less expensive III-V manufacturing.
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