Product Reviews

Product Briefing Outline: Rohm and Haas Company has launched its new line of ‘Enlight’ materials suite of products for crystalline silicon cell photovoltaic manufacturing. The Enlight product suite is designed to improve traditional solar cell processing by increasing cell efficiency and increasing manufacturing yields.

Product Briefing Outline: The TITAN TRACKER 122-219 ATR PRECISION is a new concept in solar trackers and has been developed for flat-plate and high concentrating photovoltaics  CPV). It breaks with the usual trend, based on mounted-pole systems, and is claimed to offer improved benefits during the whole life-cycle of the installation.

Product Briefing Outline: Buerkle GmbH has introduced its multi-opening module laminator that can process both crystalline and thin-film photovoltaic cells. The ‘Ypsator’ system laminates up to 20 modules per cycle. On a surface area of 3.5m² per opening and five openings, manufacturers can produce 10 photovoltaic modules per batch at the same time. The total annual capacity is around 500,000 modules, which corresponds to an annual power capacity of 40 megawatts.

Product Briefing Outline: SierraTherm Production Furnaces has introduced its new 5500 Series APCVD system with a 660mm deposition width.  This tool is capable of depositing a combination of up to five layers of doped (BSG, PSG) and undoped SiO2 films in a single pass. Its throughput capacity of 1875 WPH for 156mm wafers or 2300 WPH of 125mm wafers make it compatible with today’s high production cell lines.  Films with thicknesses of up to 300nm can be deposited at this process speed.

Product Briefing Outline: The ‘Eyelit Manufacturing’ solution delivers a full featured, technically advanced manufacturing execution system (MES), asset management, product costing, plant-level connectivity hub, and broad spectrum of other essential functionality. By giving clear insight into production process efficiency, performance/equipment efficiency, inventory control and resource management along with the ability to automatically react to conditions in any factory system, Eyelit Manufacturing suite enables customers to coordinate, control, and respond to changing demands in production.

Product Briefing Outline: DEK has introduced the PVP1200 screen printer capable of 1,200 wafers-per-hour (WPH) throughput and offering advanced automated features for high speed and repeatability. The PVP1200 is built using expertise gained from DEK’s established high-accuracy screen printing platforms, proven in surface-mount assembly and chip-scale semiconductor packaging.

Product Briefing Outline: Coveme SpA’s new ‘dyMat PYE’ backsheet material is used to prevent electrical hazards and to grant high vapour barrier, thus avoiding power loss during the expected lifetime of the solar module. Coveme, in co-operation with DuPont Teijin Films, has developed a high grade PET inner layer with a lifetime five times longer than traditional polyester. Traditional solutions are multiple layer backsheets with fluoropolymers on the air side, polyester (PET) in the middle, and a third layer towards the cell side. Most of the job is done by the polyester film that must be protected by an outer layer versus the air side.

Product Briefing Outline: MANZ print station powered by Optomec Aerosol Jet Manz offers a new print station for contact-less printing of crystalline solar cells using OPTOMEC Aerosol Jet technology and will be the exclusive sales and marketing partner for the Optomec solar applications. Optomec has developed an advanced contact free metallization process for crystalline solar cells. Manz will integrate the Optomec technology into its back end line platform.

Product Briefing Outline: Applied Materials has introduced the ‘Applied E3’ advanced equipment and process control solution, intended to be a comprehensive factory automation (FA) software package for improving the productivity and reducing the costs of semiconductor, flat panel display and photovoltaic solar cell manufacturing. The modular packages utilize proprietary algorithms that are claimed to boost process capability by >30 percent, reduce unscheduled downtime, and shorten cycle time to achieve up to a 20 percent increase in overall equipment effectiveness. Applied Materials said the system has already been employed by multiple major manufacturers and is currently being used in volume production.