Your daily dose of photovoltaic technology developments and solar news

Product Briefing Outline: BrightView Systems has unveiled the InSight M Series, which it claims to be the world's first in-line process control and optimization tool developed specifically to address the challenges faced by thin-film solar cell manufacturers. The Wide Area Metrology (WAM) system provides continuous monitoring and whole-panel mapping of critical material and process parameters at full production throughput and for 100% of manufactured panels.

Product Briefing Outline: J.A. Woollam has integrated its Flying M-2000 Spectroscopic Ellipsometer into a mapping tool for thin-film uniformity measurements over the entire PV panel.  The high accuracy and wide spectral coverage of the M-2000 ensure that every layer in a thin film stack can be measured, while new automation has been designed to ensure fast, precise measurements over the entire panel.

Product Briefing Outline: Sensors Unlimited, part of Goodrich Corp., says that its high-resolution, shortwave infrared (SWIR) area and linescan cameras are being used to improve the manufacturing yield of photovoltaic cells. SWIR technology is well-suited to monitor the quality of solar thin films, concentrated PV, and crystalline cells, to maximize efficiency of the solar cell manufacturing process through final assembly of the completed modules.

Product Briefing Outline: Mitsubishi Plastics has launched the high gas barrier photovoltaic (PV) backsheet ‘Back-Barrier’ to the global market. The new backsheet material is Mitsubishi Plastics' latest development in high gas barrier films with the world’s highest level of water vapor barrier, according to the company and customer evaluation tests.

Product Briefing Outline: Kaneka has introduced a newly developed ‘Hybrid’ PV module to the US market. The Hybrid PV module uses tandem junction cells, employing a microcrystalline thin-film silicon layer and the thin-film amorphous silicon layer. The new module is said to achieve a maximum 42% higher energy conversion efficiency than Kaneka's conventional thin-film amorphous silicon PV module. The nominal power of the Hybrid PV module is 110Wp.

Product Briefing Outline: Solar Metrology, a provider of x-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis tools, has expanded its SMX XRF tool portfolio for film composition and thickness measurement of CIGS photovoltaic depositions with the addition of the System SMX-ISI.

Product Briefing Outline: Saflex, a unit of Solutia, has launched a new thin gauge polyvinyl butyral (PVB) based encapsulant designed specifically for photovoltaic applications. The new product, Saflex PA41, is claimed to significantly reduce encapsulant usage by 33%, while maintaining module durability and processing performance. The global launch of Saflex PA41 comes shortly after successful completion of IEC 61646 certification, with testing on thin-film modules. Saflex also partnered with module manufacturers to confirm that handling, processing, and throughput of Saflex PA41 met or exceeded expectations compared to thicker gauge PVB encapsulations.

Product Briefing Outline: DuPont has introduced its new ‘Solamet’ PV412 photovoltaic (PV) metallization paste, the latest in a line of silver conductor materials specifically developed for thin film PV technologies.  DuPont collaborated with Ascent Solar Technologies, Inc. (ASTI), a developer of flexible thin-film solar modules, as it developed the new metallization paste.

Unlike news stories, which generally have a short lifespan, but higher visitor levels, new product reviews can often prove popular for several months or more. Excluding the PV-Tech homepage, the Product Briefings section is the fourth most visited section of the site in 2009.  In collating the Top 10 new product reviews of 2009, many product reviews in particular stood out for having an extremely long shelf-life that with some started in 2008, yet continued to attract readers throughout the year.

Product Briefing Outline: Schenk Vision has launched the I-V Curve Tracer from the SolarMeasure product family that enables correlation of optical inspection and efficiency tests (I-V curve) for thin-film PV production lines. Schenk has developed a new technology that is complimentary to flashers but enables an early feedback on the module efficiency.