Thin film solar cell technologies have widely sparked the interest of solar cell manufacturers because the long anticipated shortage of feedstock silicon is now being felt in the wafer based photovoltaic industry. Typical thin film solar cells are only a few microns thickness of silicon on glass compared to hundreds of microns thickness for a wafer based cell. Thin film cells consist of a light absorbing silicon layer sandwiched between thin conductive films serving as electrodes on a glass substrate. One electrode will be transparent and is commonly made from aluminum doped zinc oxide while the second electrode usually consists of metals. Although there are various intrinsic and compound semiconductor materials which are suitable for the light absorbing layer, our products are configured for the amorphous/microcrystalline silicon diode.

For solar cells, multiple levels of amorphous and/or micro-crystalline silicon must be carefully deposited over very large areas. The various layers as well as the interfaces between the layers have to be precisely controlled to achieve the maximum light-to-electricity conversion (the solar cell efficiency).

Our thin film solar product offerings for deposition of silicon and various electrode systems are based on our proven standard products using plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition and physical vapor deposition for substrate sizes of 5.7 meters².