A well-established company that enjoys an excellent reputation as an optical metrology solution provider in Europe, omt has been servicing the PV sector since the mid-2000s. Since then, the company has gone on to introduce its industrial Raman microscope and, just last year, the 3-in-1 microscope.
PES: Welcome back to the magazine. When we last spoke, the company had invested in a new production facility and the development of a 3-in-1 microscope for the CIGS thin film production. Against a backdrop of turbulence and consolidation in the PV industry, how in your view has the market in the industry stood up?
Dr. Matthias Eberhardt: It is my pleasure to be back at PES this year for an interview. Looking back at 2012, it was certainly a turbulent year for the photovoltaic industry. Although in 2011 investments in online measurement equipment for the thin film photovoltaic market were still being made, it was clear that these investments would be reduced in 2012. omt was prepared for a slower year in the photovoltaic market, but I don’t think that anyone foresaw the dramatic decline in the market by the end of 2012.
As I mentioned in our previous interview, omt provides state-of-the-art and customised solutions in the field of automated optical metrology. Today, optical metrology tools are instrumental in helping industry with fast and efficient inline production process monitoring, as well as quality and statistical process control.
Our non-contact measurement systems are used for process control of parameters such as film thickness, sheet resistance, chemical composition, moisture, and colour. We provide full industrial software integration, which supports e.g. SECS-GEM and Profibus protocols as well as TCP-IP for all of our hardware. These measurement systems are not only used in the thin film photovoltaic market (such as CIGS, a-Si, µc-Si and organic PV), but are incorporated in the glass, paper, semiconductor, environmental monitoring, and food industries.
That said, it is clear that it was very important that our company was not solely linked with the photovoltaic market. Our experience in 2012 is that in Europe and the US, investments in general and in particular for inline measurement systems for thin film photovoltaic bottomed out.
PES: Have there been any changes in how your company is serving the PV industry?
ME: In the past, omt has provided its photovoltaic customers with complete systems that include a number of measurement tools (such as Raman, XRF, and thin film analysis) integrated into scanner systems. These integrated systems are relatively costly, time-consuming to plan and develop, and require a number of highly skilled individuals for the data analysis. They provide our customers with a complete picture of the material properties of the thin film photovoltaic system during production. With such a tool, lab-quality measurements can be performed quickly at-line, providing the necessary feedback and statistical data required for production.
Currently our customers are looking for smaller systems that provide as much (although not all) information as possible, but at the same time are cheaper, simpler to incorporate, and can be installed on a time scale of months. We see that although the integrated solutions are most likely necessary, the PV industry has changed and omt has with it.
