Patent ID: 7960642

Claim:
A process for producing a CIS based thin-film photovoltaic module, characterized by bonding a cover glass comprising a semi-tempered glass to a CIS based thin-film photovoltaic circuit (or submodule) with an ethylene vinyl acetate (hereinafter referred to as EVA) resin film (or sheet) serving as an adhesive by crosslinking the resin through thermal polymerization reaction, wherein the photovoltaic circuit comprises CIS based thin-film photovoltaic device parts which each comprise a glass substrate and, superposed on the substrate in the following order, an alkali barrier layer, a metallic back electrode layer, a light absorption layer, a buffer layer, and a window layer and which have been electrically connected to each other with a conductivity by patterning, wherein the process further comprises placing on the CIS based thin-film photovoltaic circuit a filmy EVA resin film (or sheet) having the same size as the glass substrate, placing a strip-form EVA resin film (or sheet) only on each of the four corners, placing a cover glass thereon, putting the resultant assemblage constituted of the CIS based thin-film photovoltaic circuit, the cover glass, and the EVA resin films (or sheets) held therebetween into a vacuum heating apparatus, heating (hot plate) the assemblage with vacuum evacuation to cause the EVA resin films (or sheets) to melt and spread over the whole glass, subsequently gradually returning the internal pressure to atmospheric pressure and pressing the assemblage, and heating (hot plate) the assemblage to crosslink the EVA resin films (or sheets).