New Product: Swagelok offers new UHP specification aimed at protecting quality, containing cost

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  Swagelok components

Product Briefing Outline: Swagelok Company has unveiled a new process specification designed to meet the needs of the photovoltaic market, aimed at helping ensure quality and reduce cost of ownership for the industry. The Swagelok Photovoltaic Process Specification (SC-06) outlines testing, cleaning, and packaging steps for stainless steel components for use in PV applications.

Problem: Common UHP semiconductor standards are often well beyond what’s required for solar cell manufacturing. And the limited cleaning and purity requirements for general industry products are often inadequate for solar processing applications. The SC-06 specification defines a set of baseline requirements so that products can be processed at a level appropriate for the industry to balance the need for ultrahigh-purity processing with the cost containment that will help them achieve grid parity.

Solution: The baseline requirements include specifying the high-quality surface finish, visual inspection criteria and particle counts the PV industry needs to maintain reliability and process control for improved uptime, while identifying areas (such as work area classification, analytics, and packaging) where costs can be contained. Swagelok products are designed to provide reliable, leak-tight performance in critical PV manufacturing processes, such as Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) and diffusion. These and other processes require low leak rates for safety, control of process gas purity, as well as precise delivery of gases to maintain cell integrity and reduce scrap.

Applications: The products currently available with SC-06 processing include DP and DPH springless diaphragm valves, HB and BN series bellows valves, CW series check valves, VCR metal gasket face seal fittings, and Micro-Fit miniature tube butt weld fittings.

Platform: The SC-06 is an available option for many Swagelok high-purity products, in place of the company’s other specifications: SC-01 (Ultrahigh-purity Process), SC-10 (Standard Cleaning and Packaging), and SC-11 (Special Cleaning and Packaging).

Availability: Currently available. To download the SC-06 specification, please visit www.swagelok.com/solar.