PV equipment specialist SCHMID Group has sold eight APCVD systems to three undisclosed Asia-based solar manufacturers. Financial and shipment details were not disclosed.
Dr. Christian Buchner, vice president and head of business unit PV at the SCHMID Group said: “The current contracts show the great popularity of our technology and should be interpreted as a clear sign of stimulation of the PV industry. In future there will be more and more technology upgrades in the direction of high-efficiency cells, in particular concepts with maximum energy yield such as bi-facial solar cells.”
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SCHMID’s APCVD tool is said to be specifically designed for new solar cell processes and high volume production at atmospheric pressure using chemical vapour deposition. The tool employs multiple injection heads for producing highly uniform films such as BSG and PSG and passivation layers like SiO2, in a single system.
According to PV Tech’s latest quarterly manufacturing capacity expansion report, published in sister technical journal, Photovoltaics International, 2014 was significant for the scale of c-Si solar cell capacity expansions, notable as well due to the majority of expansions deploying PERC cell technology and N-type mono bi-facial technology.
Total dedicated c-Si solar cell expansions announced in 2014 topped 5GW, while the figure reached 7.86GW when including integrated cell/module expansions. Mono c-Si cell expansions totalled almost 2GW.
In a recent exlusive PV Tech interview, Applied Materails highlighted its focus on bi-facial solar cells for its Solion XP ion implant tool, noting around 500MW of dedicated bi-ficial cell capacity would come on stream over the next few years.
Both a technology buy cycle as well as a capacity expansion cycle are currently underway.