Wednesday, July 20, 2011

more info on thin film technology;

Hi Eric,  you did better research in your articles about CIGS before (or was it Micheal Kannelos?) Johanna was never using a coevaporation process, its a sequential process - depositing metal precursors by sputtering followed by a more or less rapid processing step in Selenium and/or Sulfur atmosphere - like Solar Frontier, Avancis, Stion, Centrotherm and Sulfurcell, because all have the same origin ARCO! By the way, Johanna was bought by Bosch and is now called Bosch CISTech, Sulfurcell was renamed to Soltecture and started CIGSe-module manufacturing using a coevaporation process. The other companies using coevaporation are Global Solar, Ascent, Solarion, Solyndra, Würth and Solibro. These companies are using processes simliar to the 3-stage co-evaporation process developed by NREL, which leads to world record efficiencies (20.3% by ZSW). Coming to some exotic processes and companies: Nanosolar - sequential process, but instead of sputtering the precursors are prepared by applying an ink (similar to ISET); Solopower - sequential process, but instead of sputtering the precursors are prepared by electrodeposition (similar to CIS Solartechnik, Odersun or NEXCIS); Miasole - reactive sputtering, simliar to coevaporation but insterad of thermal evaporation the metals are sputtered (companies using a simliar approach: AQT, XsunX).

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