Applied Materials Solar PV Equipment Innovator

The President of Applied Materials' Solar division, Dr. Charlie Gay, is featured in a Q&A article in the August issue of the global photovoltaic business magazine, InterPV. The following is a brief except of the article.

Applied Materials was founded in 1967 and has since become the leading supplier of manufacturing equipment to the semiconductor, display and more recently, the Photovoltaic (PV) industry. Today, virtually every semiconductor chip and liquid crystal flat panel display in the world is produced using Applied Materials manufacturing equipment.

Applied Materials has been providing the hardware and process technologies that contributed to reducing the cost-per-transistor by 20 million times over the past 35 years, enabling smaller, more powerful semiconductor devices which gave rise to the consumer electronics revolution. Its expanded focus today is to leverage this expertise to the solar PV industry. Applied is bringing new levels of innovation and scale to the PV industry to also drive down the cost of solar panel manufacturing with the goal of making clean, renewable energy increasingly cost competitive in more markets.

After only three years in the solar equipment business, Applied has grown to become the leading worldwide supplier of both crystalline silicon (c-Si) and thin film PV cell equipment.

Dr. Charlie Gay, President of Applied Solar, shares the success story of the PV cell equipment giant.

Visit InterPV’s web site to access the article.