Concentrator photovoltaics (CPV) is one of the promising solutions in the fields of
green energy production. Their main advantage is that the concentration of incident
light significantly increases their efficiency compared to traditional photovoltaics.
Unfortunately, light concentration also increases the temperature, which has a negative
effect on the efficiency so, the cooling of CPVs is an essential issue to fully utilize
their potentials. The idea presented by our team is to use microchannels integrated
into the backside metallization of the PV-devices. The proposed process is based on
an evaporated titanium and copper seed layer followed by selective copper electroplating
around a photoresist microchannel pattern. After removing the photoresist microchannels
remain in the grown copper that also serves as the back contact of the solar cell.
In this paper we present several improvements of the process to avoid the formation
of photoresist residues and clogging that were identified as the main reason of unsatisfactory
cooling performance in previous implementations. Cooling performance of the manufactured
device was confirmed by hydrodynamic and thermal characterization procedures and compared
to simulation results of the same device layout.
