Ultrafast High-Resolution Solar Cell Cracks Detection Process

This article presents the advancement of an ultrafast high-resolution cracks detection in solar cells manufacturing system. The aim of the developed process is to: first, improve the quality of the calibrated image taken by a low-cost conventional electroluminescence (EL) imaging setup; second, propose a novel methodology to enhance the speed of the detection of the solar cell cracks, and finally develop a proper procedure to decide whether to accept or reject the solar cell due to the existence of the cracks. The proposed detection process has been validated on various cracked/free-crack solar cell samples, evidently it was found that the cracks type, size, and orientation are more visible using the proposes method, while the speed of calibrating the EL images are in the range of 0.1–0.3 s, excluding the EL imaging time.