Solar panels on a roll with tool to identify nanoscopic defects
A ‘one-shot’ interferometer that rapidly spots nanoscale flaws in solar panels during manufacture could soon move from the lab to a production line after winning a government grant.
The device, which can compensate for conditions including excessive vibrations, will allow materials such as flexible solar panels to be manufactured more efficiently and economically by monitoring their quality.
Under the High Value Manufacturing Catapult scheme, Dr Feng Gao, a senior research fellow at Huddersfield University has been handed the three-year task of installing the technology at the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI).
Based in County Durham, CPI specialises in technologies such as printable electronics, including these rolls of flexible solar panels embedded with photovoltaic cells.
Researchers at Huddersfield’s EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Advanced Metrology have been working to improve the quality control and reliability of these flexible solar panels, developing new technologies for the detection, cleaning and repair of micro and nanoscale defects in the thin films that are vital in printed electronic products.
They have been using an award-winning Wavelength Scanning Interferometer, which can detect defects in the coatings of roll-to-roll flexible photovoltaic cells.
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