Title :
Recent progress on 15-MW Silicon-Film™ solar cell manufacturing systems
Author :
Culik, Jerry ; Abraham, Sojan ; Addison, Gretchen ; Allison, Kevin ; Faller, Frank ; Goncharovsky, Irene ; Rand, Jim ; Tomanovich, John ; Barnett, Allen
Author_Institution :
AstroPower Inc., Newark, DE, USA
Abstract :
Recent advances in the development of solar cell manufacturing systems for large-area Silicon-Film™ polycrystalline silicon sheet material have focused on cassette-less wet chemical surface etching, production-level silicon nitride anti-reflection coatings, co-fired metal contacts, a highly-automated solar cell tester-sorter system, and magazine-based wafer handling. A single APex™ polycrystalline silicon sheet generation system now is capable of producing 200-mm wide sheet at more than 3 meters per minute. This sheet generation rate is used as the basis for designing a single-thread solar cell manufacturing production line with an annual capacity of more than 15MW of large-area APx-8 solar cells.
Keywords :
antireflection coatings; elemental semiconductors; semiconductor device manufacture; silicon; solar cells; 15 MW; 15-MW Silicon-Film™ solar cell manufacturing systems; 200 mm; Si; cassette-less wet chemical surface etching; co-fired metal contacts; highly-automated solar cell tester-sorter system; magazine-based wafer handling; production-level silicon nitride anti-reflection coatings; sheet generation rate; single-thread solar cell manufacturing production line; Chemical products; Coatings; Manufacturing systems; Materials testing; Photovoltaic cells; Sheet materials; Silicon; Solar power generation; System testing; Wet etching;
Conference_Titel :
Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 2002. Conference Record of the Twenty-Ninth IEEE
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-7471-1
DOI :
10.1109/PVSC.2002.1190541
