Centrotherm expects the PV manufacturing sector to continue to be focus on both cost pressure and efficiency improvements during SNEC 2014 in Shanghai this week.
The equipment suppliers is showcasing several technologies at the major exhibition which include a low-pressure diffusion technology that claims to provide cost savings of up to 40% per wafer in solar cell emitter formation by almost doubling throughput, while reducing material consumption.
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The company is also highlighting a joint development project with the International Solar Energy Research Center (ISC) in Constance, on a new low-pressure process for highly efficient boron doping. This enables efficiency enhancement and production cost reduction for n-type solar cells, especially through the integration of upstream and downstream process steps and shorter process times.
The BiSoN Alliance work with ISC Constance has resulted in centrotherm offering process and system packages for the mass production of bifacial n-type silicon solar cells with efficiencies of over 20.5%. The cells are optimally designed and compatible for standard solar module manufacturing, according to company.
Using its centaurus PERC technology to manufacture mono-crystalline solar cells, centrotherm said it would be offering a new process and system package for passivation with Al2O3/SiNX stacks in the future by helping to avoid recombination losses and increase the reflectivity of the cell’s rear side. The upgraded packages on its PECVD systems are expected to be made available in the second half of 2014, with new system orders expected to accepted from 2015.
“Our evolutionary approach guarantees our customers that centrotherm systems deployed in their production can be upgraded to the latest state-of-the-art with process and hardware upgrade packages from our technicians, or that new cell concepts such as centaurus (PERC) or BiSoN (n-type) [which] can be integrated into existing and new production lines,” said Dr. Josef Haase, Senior Vice President Technology at centrotherm.