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We present a thermoreflectance-based metrology concept applied to compound semiconductor thin films off-line characterization in the solar cells scribing process. The presented thermoreflectance setup has been used to evaluate the thermal diffusivity of thin CdTe films and to measure eventual changes in the thermal properties of 5 m CdTe films ablated by nano and picosecond laser pulses. The temperature response of the CdTe thin film to the nanosecond heating pulse has been numerically investigated using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. The computational and experimental results have been compared.

We report on a high-power ultra-short fiber laser for thin film solar cells micromachining. The laser is based on Chirped Pulse Amplification (CPA) scheme. The pulses are stretched to hundreds of picoseconds prior to amplification and can be compressed down to picosecond at high energy. The repetition rate is adjustable from 100 kHz to 1 MHz and the optical average output power is close to 13 W (before compression). The whole setup is fully fibred, except the compressor achieved with bulk gratings, resulting on a compact and reliable solution for cold ablation.