Alex Masolin

Thermal curing of crystallographic defects on a slim-cut silicon foil

The SLIM-Cut method [1] addresses one of the most important challenges of crystalline-Si for photovoltaics: kerf-free wafering of substrates as thin as 50 microns. The SLIM-Cut technology is fully based on mechanical stress and it is compatible with low-cost fabrication methods: a stress field is applied to a silicon wafer so that a crack propagates in the silicon substrate parallel to the surface at a given depth. The top silicon layer is separated from the parent substrate and processed into a solar cell.

Design of an intra-module DC-DC converter for PV application: Design considerations and prototype

The effective efficiency of a photovoltaic system is strongly affected by varying factors such as partial shading. The centralized power conversion has limitations to mitigate that problem. As a possible solution the benefits of the distributed power conversion are explored and as an integral part of distributed power conversion an intra-module DC-DC converter is presented here to implement at substring level in photovoltaic application. In this work, the design requirements of the intra-module converter are identified and the converter is designed accordingly. The effectiveness of the designed converter is also discussed in this paper. Finally, a fully-working prototype of this converter is built and tested.