TEL Solar, formerly Oerlikon Solar, is a manufacturer of production equipment for the manufacturing of thin-film silicon cells, headquartered in

Trübbach Wartau is a municipality in the Werdenberg constituency of the Swiss canton of St. Gallen. The municipality consists of a number of villages on the eastern flank of the Alvier group, along the left shore of the Alpine Rhine. Geography Wartau ...

, Switzerland, near the border to Liechtenstein. The Japanese electronics and semiconductor company

Tokyo Electron , or TEL, is a Japanese electronics and semiconductor company headquartered in Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan. The company was founded as Tokyo Electron Laboratories, Inc. in 1963. TEL is best known as a supplier of equipment to fabricate ...

acquired the company of about 650 employees from

OC Oerlikon OC Oerlikon is a listed technology group headquartered in Pfäffikon (Schwyz), Switzerland. The name "Oerlikon" (or "œrlikon", as the company styles itself according to its corporate identity) comes from the Oerlikon district in Zurich where t ...

in November 2012. TEL Solar owns the patent for the double junction thin film silicon technology from 1993.

Micromorph The portmanteau micromorph is a combination of the words microcrystalline and amorphous. It is used for a type of silicon based multijunction thin-film solar cell. The micromorph cell Micromorph cells are thin film solar cells based on a multi ...

is the brand name describing the amorphous/microcrystalline silicon tandem cell. The two junctions consist of the

amorphous silicon Amorphous silicon (a-Si) is the non-crystalline form of silicon used for solar cells and thin-film transistors in LCDs. Used as semiconductor material for a-Si solar cells, or thin-film silicon solar cells, it is deposited in thin films onto ...

(a-Si) top cell and the

microcrystalline silicon Nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si), sometimes also known as microcrystalline silicon (μc-Si), is a form of porous silicon. It is an allotropic form of silicon with paracrystalline structure—is similar to amorphous silicon (a-Si), in that it has ...

(μc-Si) bottom cell. TEL Solar was the first to integrate boron doped zinc oxyde deposited by low pressure chemical vapour deposition (

LPCVD Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is a vacuum deposition method used to produce high quality, and high-performance, solid materials. The process is often used in the semiconductor industry to produce thin films. In typical CVD, the wafer (substra ...

) as the transparent conductive oxide layer, and the first to commercialize the high-efficiency Micromorph process. The majority of its customers upgraded from amorphous single junction to micromorph ( double junction, or tandem cell) technology. The installed production capacity at its customer sites cumulates to one gigawatt. The company maintains sales and service centers in the US, Europe, China, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore and Japan. In January 2014, Tokyo Electron Ltd announced the closure of its

micromorph The portmanteau micromorph is a combination of the words microcrystalline and amorphous. It is used for a type of silicon based multijunction thin-film solar cell. The micromorph cell Micromorph cells are thin film solar cells based on a multi ...

technology development program it acquired from Oerlikon, while in July 2014, TEL Solar announced a new efficiency record for its

module concept, with an independently certified solar conversion efficiency of 12.24%. TEL Solar's president, Kiyoshi Sato, noted: "Despite our decision to discontinue the solar business we are proud of the last result from our development team having achieved target and new world record."

Market segment

TEL Solar is a provider of

thin-film silicon Amorphous silicon (a-Si) is the non-crystalline form of silicon used for solar cells and thin-film transistors in LCDs. Used as semiconductor material for a-Si solar cells, or thin-film silicon solar cells, it is deposited in thin films onto ...

PV module production equipment, end-to-end fabrication lines, process technology and services, for the automated mass-production of such modules.

Grid parity

TEL Solar is currently offering equipment that produce PV panels that are 1.4 square meters in size, have a module efficiency of 10.8%, and a module production cost of US$0.50/watt. in 2012, TEL Solar emphasized that it had doubled the annual output of its standard manufacturing line and reduced the expected

cost of ownership Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a financial estimate intended to help buyers and owners determine the direct and indirect costs of a product or service. It is a management accounting concept that can be used in full cost accounting or even ecolog ...

by over 50% over the past three years. These improvements were seen to put TEL Solars customers in a position to offer panels at a price that enable solar energy to be sold at prices comparable to retail electricity rates in regions such as Southern Europe and California.

End-to-end manufacturing lines

TEL Solars possesses a fully automated thin-film solar module manufacturing lines (ThinFab 140) with an annual production capacity of 140 MW. The company highlights three key components of it in the latest generation production line: # TCO for depositing transparent conductive oxide (TCO) layers for front and back contacts # KAI MT for plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (

PECVD Plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) is a chemical vapor deposition process used to deposit thin films from a gas state (vapor) to a solid state on a substrate. Chemical reactions are involved in the process, which occur after creati ...

) to build the amorphous and microcrystalline photosensitive layers and # LSS for laser patterning to produce serially connected cells. In addition, TEL Solar claimed to be the only supplier of transparent conductive oxide (TCO) technology with haze on demand. This proprietary effect is seen to enable the trapping of light in the photovoltaic thin-film, maximizing conversion efficiency, thus directly enhancing the performance of its solar module and reducing its cost per

watt-peak The nominal power is the nameplate capacity of photovoltaic (PV) devices, such as solar cells, modules and systems, and is determined by measuring the electric current and voltage in a circuit, while varying the resistance under precisely define ...

Form factor

The company claimed its 1.4-m² substrate to be the leading format for equipping silicon thin-film module production facilities, and that it became an industry standard through numerous installations. TEL Solar emphasized that the substrate it used, was the only one available for wide-scale implementations, and that its format had further advantages over other, larger substrates, including higher efficiency, lower cost of ownership per watt, lower shipment costs, and ease of installation.

Micromorph module technology

The company stated that its amorphous/microcrystalline design enables module performance by capturing up to 50% more sunlight than conventional thin film silicon PV modules. The

stacked-cell concept was pioneered and patented at the Institute of Microtechnology (IMT) of the

University of Neuchâtel The University of Neuchâtel (UniNE) is a French-speaking university based in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. The university has four faculties (schools) and more than a dozen institutes, including arts and human sciences, natural sciences, law and eco ...

, Switzerland, and licensed to TEL Solar in 2003. A new world record PV module based on the

concept with 12.24% efficiency was independently certified in July 2014.

End-to-end module factory

TEL Solar offers its customers a complete manufacturing solution for thin film silicon, including the

equipment for depositing the silicon layers, the

equipment to deposit thin film zinc oxide on the front and back of the silicon layers, the advanced laser systems to scribe cell lines and the equipment to encapsulate the active layers to form the finished module.

References

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External links

Company website www.tel.com
Thin-film cell manufacturers