Experimental investigation on the machining characteristics of fixed-free abrasive combined wire sawing PV polycrystalline silicon solar cell

Abstract

At present, the fixed abrasive wire sawing (FAWS) technology is gradually used in the photovoltaic industry to cut polycrystalline silicon slices. However, there are obvious directional wire marks, parallel grooves, and amorphous silicon layer on the surface of the slices formed by the FAWS, which leads to a high optic reflectivity of the textured surface obtained after the mature acid etching texturization technology. So the slices cannot meet the requirements of the photovoltaic cell. In the paper, a novel fixed-free abrasive combined wire sawing (FFACWS) technology for cutting PV polycrystalline silicon is presented to solve this problem, by adding loose SiC abrasives to cooling lubricant during the fixed abrasive wire sawing. A single-factor and orthogonal experimental study on sawing characteristics was carried out. The effect of size and mass fraction of SiC abrasives in the slurry, workpiece feed speed and wire speed on the surface morphology, roughness, and kerf loss were studied. The results show that within the range of the processing parameters in the paper studied, the obvious wire marks, parallel grooves, and ductile layers on the surface of the slices can be removed by the FFACWS. The surface roughness of the slices along the wire movement direction and the workpiece feed direction increases with the increase of the mass fraction of SiC abrasives in the slurry and workpiece feed speed and it decreases with the increase of wire speed. But the effect of the size of SiC abrasives is related to the matching of the protruding height of the fixed abrasives on the wire surface along the workpiece feed direction. In the wire movement direction, it increases with the size of SiC abrasives. The kerf loss increases with the increase of size and mass fraction of SiC abrasives in the slurry and the wire speed but has little effect with the change of workpiece feed speed.