The Institute for Solar Energy Research Hamelin (ISFH) advised that it had recently bought a process development tool (PDT) from SoLayTec, which will use A12O3 deposition and integrate the surface passivation layers into different type of silicon solar cells, which are under development.
The companies advised that delivery of SoLayTec’s PDT tool is scheduled for May and holds the ability to process nearly 100 wafers per hour with A12O3. ISFH noted that the project is funded by the German Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU).
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“At ISFH we consider atomic layer deposition (ALD) of Al2O3 as a key technology enabling the production of high-efficiency silicon solar cells on an industrial scale in the near future. The main problem of the traditional ALD technique so far was that it was not compatible with the high throughput required in solar cell production, although record-high efficiencies up to 21.7% have been realized at ISFH on PERC solar cells with ALD-Al2O3 rear surface passivation. The issue of limited throughput will be overcome by the spatial ALD approach developed by SoLayTec in conjunction with the advanced process developments performed at ISFH. The intense collaboration of ISFH and SoLayTec could make spatial ALD a key process in the production of next-generation industrial silicon solar cell,” commented Dr. Jan Schmidt, head of the PV department at ISFH.