Solexel, Inc.

Joe Kramer

Mehrdad M Moslehi

Somnath S Nag

Suketu Arun Parikh

David Xuan-Qi Wang

Pawan Kapur

George D Kamian

Subramanian Tamilmani

David Dutton

Nevran Ozguven

Doug Crafts

Asli Buccu Ucok

Rafael Ricolcol

It is an object of this disclosure to provide high productivity, low cost-of-ownership manufacturing equipment for the high volume production of photovoltaic (PV) solar cell device architecture. It is a further object of this disclosure to reduce material processing steps and material cost compared to existing technologies by using gas-phase source silicon. The present disclosure teaches the fabrication of a sacrificial substrate base layer that is compatible with a gas-phase substrate growth process. Porous silicon is used as the sacrificial layer in the present disclosure. Further, the present disclosure provides equipment to produce a sacrificial porous silicon PV cell-substrate base layer.

Porous silicon electro-etching system and method

A structure and method operable to create a reusable template for detachable thin semiconductor substrates is provided. The template has a shape such that the 3-D shape is substantially retained after each substrate release. Prior art reusable templates may have a tendency to change shape after each subsequent reuse; the present disclosure aims to address this and other deficiencies from the prior art, therefore increasing the reuse life of the template.

Method of creating reusable template for detachable thin film substrate

The present disclosure relates to methods for selectively etching a porous semiconductor layer to separate a thin-film semiconductor substrate (TFSS) having planar or three-dimensional features from a corresponding semiconductor template. The method involves forming a conformal sacrificial porous semiconductor layer on a template. Next, a conformal thin film silicon substrate is formed on top of the porous silicon layer. The middle porous silicon layer is then selectively etched to separate the TFSS and semiconductor template. The disclosed advanced etching chemistries and etching methods achieve selective etching with minimal damage to the TFSS and template.

Method for releasing a thin-film substrate

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Joe Kramer