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When I started perusing yesterday's announcement about Veeco's purchase of Mill Lane Engineering, a small Massachusetts-based manufacturer of web coating and deposition systems for flexible solar panels and other substrates, the name of the acquired firm rang a bell. When I saw that the company had an existing order with a "leading manufacturer of thin-film copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar cells," I knew why that memory bell had rung: During my visit to Global Solar Energy's brand-spankin' fab south of Tucson, I had seen the Mill Lane gear on the factory floor.

At the beginning of the CIGS cell production line, Global's CTO and tour guide Jeff Britt showed me the two web sputtering tools, which are used to deposit the molybdenum back-contact layer as well as a very thin chromium film that promotes better adhesion of the "Moly" to the footwide stainless-steel-foil substrate. The 8-MW tools are capable of rolling at about a one-meter-per-minute process speed, according to Britt.

Although Mill Lane put the system together, he said that Global had its own ideas about what the equipment should be and took about a "80-90% complete design to the toolmaker. We knew very specifically what we wanted."

The overdue, much-anticipated write-up of my Global Solar experience will appear within the next week in Chip Shots (no, really!), so check back for more details of the CIGS company's new factory, process toolset and flow, and ramp plans.