Solar

The ever-increasing need for cleaner, more sustainable forms of energy is fueling the expansion of the solar industry. For solar PV to become competitive with the more traditional forms of energy, it is critical to drive down cost per watt. Applied Materials is uniquely positioned to meet this goal by offering manufacturing scale to boost factory productivity and technological advancements to increase cell efficiency. We are the world’s #1 provider of solar PV equipment, offering wafer and cell producers state-of-the-art manufacturing systems, process consulting, advanced automation and services.

Cell Manufacturing Systems

Applied Materials is a market leader in integrated, cell metallization technology offering best-in-class wafer handling, print quality and print precision capabilities. Applied’s Baccini Cell Systems group is an industry pioneer with over 40 years of leadership in screen printing technology. Applied Baccini platforms are the cornerstone of most solar factories today, producing the world’s highest efficiency PV cells in high-volume manufacturing. To help cell makers to further increase cell efficiency, we continue to bring new equipment and process solutions to market that enable advanced cell designs.

Cell Process Solutions

Beyond cell manufacturing platforms, Applied Materials provides customers with integrated solutions that include qualified consumables and process consulting in addition to hardware and software.

View Products

Wafer Manufacturing Systems

Applied Materials is a market leader in high-volume, high yield, cost-effective PV wafer production. Applied’s Precision Wafering Systems group has a rich 25-year history of leading innovation in wire sawing including several industry firsts. Our solutions cover all critical wafering steps from squaring and cropping to wafer slicing. We continue to drive the industry forward with innovations in equipment design, process optimization and wire technologies.

Thin Film

Applied Materials’ thin film solutions leverage the company’s deep engineering experience in physical and chemical vapor deposition techniques to enable significant reductions in manufacturing costs for the solar industry. Thin film technologies are ideally suited for large-scale applications such as utility scale solar farms and commercial rooftops, where space is not a constraint.

View Products

Global Research and Development

Our global R&D network is a tightly integrated web of the solar industry’s top technologists. With facilities in North America (Santa Clara), Europe (Treviso, Italy and Cheseaux, Switzerland) and China (Xi’an), our aim is to continuously innovate and bring new advancements to the market that are geared towards driving down cost per watt. In addition, we focus on our customers’ top efficiency and productivity challenges and collaborate with leading suppliers to develop high performance consumables.

Automation and Service

Automation at the equipment, process and factory level is becoming increasingly important as factories increase in scale and sophistication. Applied Materials’ position as the leading supplier of factory automation and control software to the semiconductor and flat panel display industries gives us a unique advantage in helping solar factories automate for highest operational efficiency.

In addition, Applied Materials has the solar industry’s largest service infrastructure with over 3000 field engineers worldwide. Our service experts offer customers a deep reservoir of specialized hardware and process knowledge backed up by unmatched range of engineering and logistics technologies, including Applied's ExpertConnect™ remote diagnostic capability.