Balancing Deposition Rate with Film Quality for PECVD Productivity

Solar Industry Magazine featured Applied Materials’ plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) technology in this month’s print issue. Read the follownig short excerpt of the article.

Although thin-film silicon so¬lar cells use substantially lower amounts of raw materials than their silicon wafer-based counterparts, they also depend on vacuum-based silicon deposition systems. The capital productivity of these systems is a key contributor to overall solar cell cost.

To improve capital productivity, both the performance of individual deposition systems and deployment of those systems in the process line must be optimized. Continuing ad¬vances in plasma-enhanced chemi¬cal vapor deposition technology are on track to increase microcrystalline silicon deposition rates by more than 50% by the end of the year and dou¬ble the position rate through further equipment enhancements.

Plasma-enhanced chemical va¬por deposition (PECVD) is a critical step in thin-film silicon solar mod¬ule manufacturing. The quality of the PECVD layers defines the per¬formance of the module, while the deposition rate largely determines its cost. Unfortunately, these two param¬eters conflict: Slower deposition gen¬erally produces higher-quality films, but it drives processing costs up.

Two central goals of equipment design are to maximize the deposition rate while maintaining film quality, and to maximize overall equipment productivity. This article explains how process parameters contribute to module performance and cost, and illustrates various approaches to PECVD optimization.

To access the full article download the PDF at the bottom of this blog post.

Downloads

Solar Industry Mag AMAT PECVD Tech June 2010.pdf

Solar Industry Mag AMAT PECVD Tech June 2010.pdf 498.58 KB