To reduce the cost of PV electricity and to obtain continuous improvements with respect to efficiency and/or manufacturing cost of PV modules, SERIS operates pilot lines for both silicon wafer solar cells and silicon thin-film solar cells. The Singular is part of a multi-million dollar project headed by SERIS focusing on silicon wafer heterojunction solar cells and their mass production.
The R&D project is jointly funded by the National Research Foundation of Singapore (NRF) and several international partners, namely SERIS and Singulus Technologies including more international partner companies. The consortium brings together partners spanning from wafer, equipment and materials suppliers to device and module manufacturers.
Dr Ing. Stefan Rinck, CEO, Singulus Technologies AG said: SERIS is one of the leading solar research institutes in Asia, and Singulus Technologies is proud to collaborate with Dr Thomas Mueller and his team on the heterojunction solar cell project. We believe that this project will see the successful commercialization of a technology based on our SINGULAR ICP-PECVD coating tool for antireflection coatings for new crystalline silicon solar cells, which will reduce the cost of solar cell production and make solar PV a cost-effective alternative source of energy.
The Singular tool already has demonstrated capabilities for silicon nitride ARCs, achieving excellent efficiencies and color uniformity for current solar cell technologies. In the SERIS project, these capabilities will be expanded to the deposition of active layers for heterojunction silicon wafer solar cells. The key of the tool is the PECVD inductively coupled plasma. The inductively coupled plasma excitation allows ideal control over film composition and density at high deposition rates.
The innovative tool concept is based on static inline production which combines the advantages of inline substrate transport and static processing. It allows coating of complex layers, like layer stacks or gradients by keeping a continuous substrate flow. The process variability, the small tool foot print and high reliability guarantee high cell efficiencies, excellent total cost of ownership and high uptime.
