Performance improvement of amorphous silicon see-through solar modules with high transparency by the multi-line ns-laser scribing technique

• Laser scribing forms local shunts during the see-through module fabrication.
• Shunts severely degrade the performance of high transparency see through modules.
• New scribing technique increases the power of high transparency modules by ∼10%.
• Module performance under weak light illumination was also improved.
• No significant system retrofit is necessary to adopt the multi-line technique.

Amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) see-through solar modules with high transparency are desired in the buildings integrated photovoltaics application. However, laser scribing, which is currently indispensable for see-through module fabrication, usually introduces local shunts to the devices. See-through solar modules, especially those with high transparency which typically require more laser scribe lines, suffer severe power loss under standard test conditions and under weak light illumination due to such shunt problems. A new multi-line method was developed to effectively reduce the shunts and enhance the output power of the modules with high transparency by combining several laser lines together to achieve larger total line width. Increasing the total line width from 150 μm to 450 μm resulted in an increase in output power by about 10% for large area see-through solar modules with 30% transparency. This technique was also found to significantly improve the module performance under weak light illumination.