As the solar energy industry continues to evolve, one trend is clear: the need for solar panels to last longer in order to improve their cost effectiveness for terrestrial, UAV, and space applications. Challenging that extended lifetime are a variety of degradation mechanisms, the greatest of which are electrical losses from cell fracture and hot spots due to cell cracking. Complicating this is industry’s move to thinner solar panels for all market segments. Thinner panels offer a variety of advantages for terrestrial applications including lower costs, reduced shipping costs and easier installation. For UAV and space applications, solar panel weight (mass) is extremely critical and lower mass solar panels directly increase the capability of the vehicles.

Osazda Energy has developed a unique technology and innovative, cost-effective product to address cell crack performance degradation and give cell cracks the ability to self-heal. Our MetZilla Paste Technology and MetZilla Plate Technology was created to help today’s solar cells to be crack tolerant – virtually eliminating the major long-term degradation challenge for all solar modules. MetZilla Paste Technology is specifically engineered to be a drop-in replacement screen printed metallization system, commonly used for terrestrial solar panels. MetZilla Plate Technology offers a cost-saving electroplated metallization approach for high efficiency (III-V) solar cells commonly used in space and UAV applications.