We employ laser scribing combined with chemical etching process to isolate the shunts in industrial off-spec or non-prime crystalline solar cells. Liquid crystal sheet and Infrared camera measurements have been carried out to reveal the existence of the shunts and hot spot temperature under reverse bias. Following laser scribing with proper laser parameters, chemical etching has been used to further optimize the isolation effect. Through illuminated current voltage characteristic measurements, the improved open circuit voltage, fill factor and efficiency have been obtained. These results demonstrate that this combined shunt isolation process has great potential for its application in the solar cells. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.