INDEOtec announces final acceptance of its Octopus II – PECVD platform, with customer achieving 22% cell efficiency for hetero- junction solar cells.
INDEOtec SA, the Swiss plasma process equipment manufacturer,introduced its Octopus II for front and back side coating of crystalline silicon solar cells at the EU PVSEC 2011 in Hamburg. The Octopus II is the second fully-in-house developed product of INDEOtec, conceived, manufactured and successfully tested in short time-to-market as a result of very strong research and engineering efforts.
CEO, Dr. Omid Shojaei says: “We are proud that we could achieve several major milestones during the last months”. “Our proprietary PECVD reactor combined with the OCTOPUS II cluster machine and process technology lead to a remarkable increase of cell efficiency for c-Si solar cells”, he adds.
Final Acceptance test for OCTOPUS II :
OCTOPUS II landed out his final acceptance test in May 2013. The tool, installed at the institute of micro engineering (IMT) of the EPFL in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, aims to improve transfer of technology for silicon solar hetero-junctions and thin film silicon solar cells. This state of the art platform was developed by the INDEOtec team with focus on pilot production market.
“We are extremely glad of the fruitful collaboration we have with INDEOtec and the primarily results are out-standing. We reach a perfect layer quality and screen- printed hetero-junction cells with efficiencies above 22% were achieved by the EPFL and CSEM teams within a few samples runs” comments Prof. Christophe Ballif, director of the Photovoltaics laboratory at IMT-EPFL and of the newly funded CSEM PV center, a technology transfer center in the field of photovoltaics.
New high temperature PECVD reactor:
INDEOtec also introduces a new “High Temperature PECVD” reactor. The new reactor is designed to be compatible with the OCTOPUS II platform thus enhancing its versatility. This reactor can work at high temperature (450°C) which opens applications for high quality dielectric passivation, typically used for PERC, PERL crystalline Si solar cells and in general in micro-electronics, active-matrix OLED and MEMS. The high- temperature reactor combines all the advantages and improved features since the development of the OCTOPUS II reactor and take them to an all-new level.
Obtaining of “Swiss-Made” label:
INDEOtec is also proud to announce the obtaining of the “Swiss-Made” label, symbolizing Swiss precision work, a highly-recognizable label for Swiss quality products at home and abroad.
“With more than 80% of product value resulting from Swiss expertise, labor and in close collaboration with local suppliers, not only we can certify our innovative and high performance products as “SWISS-Made” but we also keep the price of our tools very competitive by intelligent engineering. Added values resulting from our innovations are for our customers”, comments Dr. Shojaei.
About INDEOtec:
located in Neuchatel- Switzerland, INDEOtec is a technology company driven by innovation and committed to providing state of the art plasma coating solutions. Our staff is comprised of a team of talented and experienced professionals with in-depth knowledge of thin films coating equipment manufacturing and solar PV industry.
OCTOPUS II product family is a modular and fully automated cluster equipment with multiple deposition & treatment chambers. OCTOPUS II offers outstanding flexibility and reliability for optimization and manufacturing of multi-stack thin films for a wide range of applications.
The proprietary PECVD reactor is a capacitive-coupled plasma reactor featuring box concept with narrow gap, RF-VHF frequencies, gas shower head and isothermal body with up to 300°C or 450 °C.
