Sick has introduced the Inspector I20-UV Flex, designed for inspecting the edges of highly light-absorbing, deep blue solar wafers.
The Inspector, with its integrated illumination, image evaluation, and Ethernet interface, is a compact and reliable solution for edge inspection, which is also easy to integrate into industrial environments. The Inspector I20-UV Flex provides a reliable solution for inspecting deep blue, coated solar wafers. The 2D vision sensor with integrated LED ring light delivers excellent performance for grey, etched wafers.
The manufacture of solar cells is a series of complex operations. In various wet-chemical, plasma, and thermal processes, different layers are applied to the silicon substrate. Since the solar cells are very thin (measuring only approximately 180µm in thickness), the risk of damage is high. At the same time, the characteristics of the solar wafer surfaces change in nearly every process step, from silvery gleam all the way to almost black colour with a monocrystalline or polycrystalline structure.
