Patent ID: 7259321

Claim:
A method for manufacturing a thin film photovoltaic module comprising series connected cells, the cells comprising a front contact, a back contact and a photovoltaically active region positioned between the front and back contacts, the series connected cells being formed by scribing a front contact layer, a photovoltaically active layer and a back contact layer on a substrate, the method comprising laser scribing at least one of the front contact layer, the photovoltaically active layer or the back contact layer to form laser scribes using a laser beam scanned over the layer wherein the front contact layer is scanned with a low-power laser beam to locate the position of the scribes in the front contact layer by measuring the difference in one or more of the transmission, reflection or scattering of the low-power laser beam caused by the scribes in the front contact layer and using the differences measured to position the scribes in one or both of the photovoltaically active and back contact layers.