IN-CORE, SEMILAB and partners develop new metrology and characterisation platform

 

IN-CORE Systèmes, a French-based provider of modular optical industrial inspection solutions, has developed and implemented a new and unique metrology and characterisation platform. The project was a cooperative effort of the company together with the Organic Photovoltaic (OPV) solar cell development project within CEATech at INES (National Solar Energy Institute) in France, in partnership with the manufacturer of metrology instruments for characterisation, SEMILAB.

The new platform combines two key technologies in order to make a powerful tool designed specifically for printed PV (organic and perovskite) application characterisation: Spectroscopic ellipsometry technology for thickness and optical properties measurements of OPV  layer stack and 2D and 3D  image processing technology for defect aspect detection embedded with dimensional  measurements of various surface characteristics and full traceability solutions. Designed to inspect and measure at highest precision on large area, flexible plastic or glass substrates, the new platform provides non-contact, fully automated defect detection and location. Furthermore the system provides advanced metrology capability which has been optimised for the OPV complex process, and is capable of analysing single and multilayer structures for defining and assessing quality and manufacturing process steps:

Thanks to IN-CORE’s LineaVision System integrated on the XY table in motion the product is fully scanned for a precise control with a goal of 100% material surface inspection.  The multipurpose sensors (cameras) with adequate light source  set up  according to the product structure and the region of interest characteristics, allow the user to choose in which resolution the image of the single or multilayer substrate has to be acquired and meet measurements highest precision (positions, overlap, registration of all printed/coated features …). In parallel, thanks to a performant off-line image processing software tool, it is possible to plot profiles, histograms, compute some statistics, overlap layers and a much more.

Thanks to SEMILAB’ Spectroscopic Ellipsometer , on the other hand, fast and accurate thickness and optical properties determination  of the OPV and Peroskskite single layers and multilayers structure can be achieved on a very small area due to the small spot  (less than 150 µm on the sample) directly on foil. The XY mapping stage allows mapping the thickness of the printed layers on 30x30cm. The transparent conductive oxide or the barriers layers can also be characterized with this non-contact and fast method.