An open-source CFD model for computing thermal effect in the context of laser-induced semiconductor processing in photovoltaic applications

Thermal treatment by means of lasers enables to process industry compatible photovoltaic solar cells by improving its materials' physical, optical, and chemical properties. In order to achieve a high-quality processing result as well as optimisation and characterisation, a detailed understating on the laser-induced photovoltaic solar cells processing is absolutely necessary, which arguably may not be possible using the experimental techniques. Hence, this contribution presents a numerical model within the open-source CFD platform, known as OpenFOAM, for simulating laser-induced heat transfer and phase change phenomena in the context of photovoltaic solar cells processing. Upon development, the model was implemented to simulate three relevant and available experimental cases of photovoltaic solar cells processing: (1) laser annealing of silicon wafer with fixed continuous wave (CW) laser beam, (2) CW diode laser annealing of silicon thin-film deposited on glass substrate, and (3) nanosecond pulse laser-induced melting and solidification of silicon wafer. In all of the cases, an excellent agreement was observed between the numerical and experimental results, which not only demonstrate the accuracy but also the capability of the model to capture and explain the required thermal phenomena in processing photovoltaic solar cells. Therefore, the present contribution may simply be used as a state-of-the-art of modelling and optimisation of the considered process, and indeed other related laser-processing fabrication steps, when the correct model options are chosen.