BT Imaging

New Suite of Production Tools Boost Cell Conversion Efficiency & Cast Mono Wafer Yield

admin — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:30:07 +0000

With this suite of tools, wafer makers and fully integrated PV manufacturers can inspect every wafer in production and understand its electrical performance before they make it into a cell, thereby commanding premium pricing for wafers and cells.

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The Cast Mono Dilemma

uma — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:00:54 +0000

Several leading manufacturers are building out GW scale capacity or converting their existing multi-crystalline capacity to mono-like or cast mono wafers. This appears to make sense since, as the name states, this technology offers CZ-mono-like appearance and performance with multi-like cost. However, things may not always be as they appear. This article examines the problems, such as a wide efficiency spread, posed by cast mono wafers and how grading effectively can help manufacturers command premium pricing.

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Efficiency-Limiting Defects and Material Quality Control

uma — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 02:04:23 +0000

Photovoltaics International

Incoming quality control is essential for the material yield of mono-crystalline Si PV wafers as demonstrated by this study performed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems.

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Grading Wafers Key to High Cell Efficiency

uma — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:53:43 +0000

In the race to cut costs for photovoltaics, there is a strong trend towards higher efficiency wafers. A key to producing high efficiency cells is to start with high quality wafers. Whether mono, multi-crystalline, or cast-mono wafers, BT Imaging has developed and validated a rigorous grading system for optimizing solar cell wafers.

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The Picture of Quality

uma — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 01:48:48 +0000

Photon

The annual survey on luminescence imaging reveals that BT Imaging has the edge on inspecting cast mono wafers.

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Cast-Mono Wafers Revisited

uma — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 19:41:00 +0000

Solar Industry Magazine

Cast mono is still a relatively new technology, so until it becomes more widely used, wafering companies are concentrating on the usual factors–keeping costs low, reducing waste and speeding up the inspection process to keep up with production.
Read more

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Maturing Solar Industry Incorporating New Tools and New Quality Measures.

uma — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 00:15:08 +0000

Eric Wesoff, Greentech Media, June 1, 2011

BT Imaging Improves PV Quality with Photoluminescence Imaging

“I spoke with Wayne McMillan, the VP of Sales and Marketing. He spoke of the improvements that BTi enables in efficiency and yield from silicon blocks all the the way to the module level. McMillan claims that their tools are much faster and provide much better resolution than existing solutions. The firm will soon be introducing tools that can inspect 3,600 wafers per hour.”

New Techniques to Increase PV Product Quality

wayne — Wed, 25 May 2011 01:30:28 +0000

Yield Matters

Achieving high yield, efficiency and product quality in photovoltaic (PV) cell factories has become more important in recent years as project financers look to reduce the risk of their long-term investments. Product quality is typically determined by electrical performance metrics and aesthetic concerns. These parameters are checked at the end of the cell manufacturing process and cells are binned into quality grades. To be successful, the vast majority of cells need to be in the highest quality ‘bankable’ grades. Issues which can result in product performance and quality degradation range from the relatively small that last for a few minutes or hours, to issues that last for several months and could be large in magnitude. With cell lines now running above 2000 cells per hour, maintaining product quality depends on fast troubleshooting and fixing of such issues.

Electrical Wafer Quality and Correlation to Cell Efficiency

admin — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 18:58:21 +0000

Future PV: December 2010

While physical metrics are important, they do not qualify a wafer in terms of the ultimately important metric–solar cell efficiency entitlement. Determining spatially resolved lifetime features is an imperative as a good predictor of the impact of wafer quality on cell efficiency.

Download article (Electrical Wafer Quality and Correction to Efficiency_FPV2010

Our co-founder Dr Thorsten Trupke wins 2010 UNSW Inventor of the Year award

wayne — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 22:45:30 +0000

Thorsten Trupke has won the 2010 UNSW Inventor of the Year Award for his contributions in field of photoluminescence testing.

Thorsten Trupke is a co-inventor of solar cell and wafer inspection systems that help to improve the quality and competitiveness of the photovoltaic industry globally.

He and his UNSW colleague, Robert Bardos, established BT Imaging (BTI) three years ago as a UNSW spin-off to commercialise several photoluminescence (PL) imaging technologies with applications across the PV manufacturing supply chain.

Follow the link below for further information:

http://www.pv.unsw.edu.au/

http://www.unswinventorawards.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=38&Itemid=26