Applied Materials announces breakthrough system to drive next wave of solar manufacturing

SANTA CLARA, USA: Applied Materials Inc. announced its new Applied Baccini®Pegaso solar photovoltaic (PV) cell manufacturing platform that enables customers to bring their novel, high-efficiency cell designs into mass production.

The Pegaso platform fabricates electrical circuits on both sides of a solar cell - a process that includes multiple screen-printed metallization steps, metrology and sorting. Advancing the state-of-the-art in cell manufacturing, the breakthrough Pegaso system delivers high yield and cell output - over 20 million solar cells per year - at the lowest overall cost-per-watt of any cell manufacturing system available.

"We are very impressed with Applied's Baccini Pegaso technology. The system is producing the highest efficiency cells with the lowest breaking ratio of any cell line in our facility, at high throughput and with consistently high yield," said Dr. Wen-Whe Pan, president of Gintech Energy Corporation. "Our customers are also very pleased with the production samples we've produced using the Applied Pegaso system and we're looking forward to continuing our partnership with Applied into the future." Gintech Energy Corp., located in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan, is one of the largest solar cell manufacturers in the world.

Key to the Pegaso platform's groundbreaking performance are its proprietary "smart" technologies that bring a new level of precision and control to the cell manufacturing process. The system's adaptive wafer-handling mechanism, based on planar motor technology, shuttles wafers between two independent tracks to optimize wafer output and enable continued operation during maintenance.

The revolutionary Pegaso-XPTM dual print head incorporates a sophisticated closed-loop metrology system that adjusts printing parameters "on-the-fly" from wafer to wafer to achieve near micron-level accuracy and repeatability for fully optimized cell performance.

"The next wave of cost-per-watt reduction in the solar PV industry will be achieved through major changes in cell technology and manufacturing sophistication to simultaneously improve efficiency and factory output," said Dr. Mark Pinto, executive VP and GM of Applied's Energy and Environmental Solutions Group. "We're honored that a technology leader such as Gintech Energy has chosen Applied's Baccini Pegaso technology to accelerate its cell efficiency roadmap."

Importantly, the Pegaso platform features "future-proof" modular architecture that enables customers to rapidly add modules for additional processing capability. This can reduce the time, cost and risk of implementing emerging cell technologies, such as advanced back contact and selective emitter schemes. The Pegaso system is also backed by Applied Global Services, the largest and most comprehensive support capability to the crystalline silicon solar industry.