Consistently rated among the 50 fastest growing technology companies in Germany, LayTec in-line GmbH is a global market leader of in-situ metrology and has made its services available to the PV industry since 2008. We’re delighted to welcome the organisation back to the magazine and to grab five minutes to put our questions to company President, Tobias Schenk.
PES: It’s good to see the company back in the magazine. How has business been recently? Are you still continuing to make considerable inroads into the PV sector?
Tobias Schenk: Of course we are affected by the recent development of the PV market, but on the other hand we have experienced a growing awareness for the benefits of quality monitoring among the remaining PV manufacturers. Combining high quality with high yield becomes increasingly important in these rough times.
Furthermore, quality assurance and documentation is a must now for module manufacturers to gain confidence both from customers and investors. This encourages us to keep up our efforts for cutting-edge metrology in the PV market. We feel that we already have a quite comprehensive range of products for front end production and we are now making inroads into the back-end with X Link, our in-line EVA cross-link testing tool.
PES: What challenges does your PV operation present you with and what action are you taking to meet those challenges?
TS: Customers pick their investments very carefully. It is our task to deliver clear, convincing numbers regarding the benefits, as well as making the ROI of in-line metrology transparent.
PES: The company was founded as a spin-off of the Technical University Berlin. Do you maintain any links with the university, and what benefits does this bring?
TS: Our well-established network of cooperation with academia is definitely a competitive advantage. This way we multiply our own innovative resources by close co-operations with a number of universities and Fraunhofer institutes. This allows us to have cutting-edge process knowledge, which is then turned into products that really address the customer needs.
PES: When you were last in PES you touched upon how the lamination process is critical to the long term stability of modules. How do your products help in this regard?
TS: We indeed got a lot of response on the last appearance and this confirmed the importance of measuring the degree of cross-linking of the EVA as the main indicator for long-term stability. Therefore, we diversified the product. Today, an integration kit is available for direct application in the line by automation and equipment manufacturers. Certifiers and testers in general are more interested in our offline X Link tool for manual testing.
