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But the scheme hatched by the capital equipment giant won't become the inspiration for a Hollywood thriller, but might end up being a compelling back story in the evolution of solar energy. The company's hopes to revolutionize thin-film photovoltaic module manufacturing with an integrated, fully automated, high-yielding production line capable of handling glass that would barely fit through that vault door.

The official launch of Applied's SunFab line happened in Milan earlier this month at the PVSEC show. But since there weren't any U.S. media types attending, the company decided to do another rollout, buffet and all, for the domestic press and analysts at Solar Power. A quartet of execs---Charlie Gay, Craig Hunter, Jonathan Pickering, and Randy Bane---made the case for the company, its solar role, solar in general, and the new product line.

Craig handled most of the SunFab-related presentation, time and again returning to the sheer size of the glass involved---5.7 square meters, or 2.2 x 2.6 meters---and how putting down single-junction amorphous-silicon and higher efficiency tandem-junction micromorph-silicon thin films on these Gen-8 equivalent slabs will provide the lowest cost of production and installation.

The ultimate goals, the solar mantra: pushing manufacturing costs to under a dollar per watt and helping drive PV toward cost-per-watt parity with conventional energy. "Solar can be competitive once we get to large-scale manufacturing to build an industry," he explained. (Then again, you could find those on the show floor who say solar is already competitive, given the right circumstances, such as peak-watt utility applications.)

SunFab line means BIG tools, BIG glass.
(Photo courtesy of Applied Materials)

He emphasized that SunFab is a thin-film line, not a piece of equipment or collection of equipment, with complete installation and setup,automation, software, metrology, abatement, and service/support options. At the core of the system are two massive Applied cluster tools--the SunFab PECVD 5.7 (for the silicon absorber layers, included a dedicated chamber for p-layer deposition) and the Aton PVD 5.7 (for the metal contact layers).

Not every tool in the SunFab line will be made by Applied---deals have been struck with "established OEM suppliers" from the glass and junction-box industries, for example---but the partners cleaning, laser-scribing, and autoclave tools will be painted to match Applied's equipment and bear the familiar logo. But regardless of whose tools do what in the production sequence, a fully processed and packaged panel-module, one with enhanced light collection, voltages, stability, and interfaces, comes out at the end of the line.

Eminently scalable, SunFab has a 50-75 MW capacity per line per year, capable of running 20 glass sheets per hour, which translates into 800,000 square meters per year. The total system, weighing more than 150 tons, requires several 747s to ship, according to Hunter. Those big Boeings are already flying, as Craig says that Applied is shipping tools to Moser Baer, which plans to ramp up and hit first glass by mid-2008.

Factories with a dozen of these lines would be in the 500 MW to 1 GW range, dwarfing all current PV fabs. All in all, the scale of SunFab and the factories that will use it mean a lower-risk, new manufacturing approach, one that will potentially lower production and installation costs by over 20%.

In the case of SunFab, as in just about everything Applied Materials makes, size---whether nano, micro, or macro---really does matter.