Realisierung eines Mehrkammer-Depositionssystems zur kontinuierlichen photovoltaischen Beschichtung flexibler Substrate

In the course of the work presented a deposition system on laboratory scale for the fabrication of amorphous hydrogenated silicon (a-Si:H) solar cells has been designed and constructed. The system consists of seven metal sealed UHV stainless steel chambers which are linked by pressure stages. The pressure stages between the deposition zones allow pressure gradients of more than 1:1000 between adjacent chambers. In the first two zones TCO ( T ransparent C onductive O xide: with sheet resistances from R sq =9±2Ω (ITO) and R sq =13±7Ω (ZnO) on a 9 by 9cm 2 glass substrate with an average transmission of 84% within the spectral range of 450nm-850nm.) and metal contacts are deposited by rf magnetron sputtering whereas two of the other zones are used for the deposition of the a-Si:H layers. In the fifth zone a laser patterning system can be coupled in. Subsequent to the test phase of all single components they are examined as a whole system. A-Si:H solar cells are produced on continuous flexible metal tapes (75m by 0.09m). For the first time it became possible to handle sputter and PECVD processes simultaneously as well as the parallel deposition of doped and intrinsic a-Si:H layers in one single vacuum chamber. This parallel processing allows the mass production of solar cells in a reel to reel in line system on long continuous tapes. The developed resulting stop and go mode can easily be applied to a continuous movement since the substrate is not fixed. Only extensions of the plasma zones according to film thickness and deposition rate are necessary. In competition to solar cells produced by separate deposition the initial efficiencies of solar cells obtained by parallel processing constantly range at over 6.7% (A=0.785cm 2 ).