Higher yield of solar wafers and enhanced solar cell efficiency withnew HeraGlaze coating by Heraeus
Enhanced crucible performance able to deliver close to 2 billion more wafers and thusup to 9GW extra power
SHANGHAI, CHINA – April 19, 2017 – Heraeus Photovoltaics, the worldwide leading supplier ofmetallization solutions to the PV industry, introduced HeraGlaze, a high-purity SiO2 diffusion barriercoating for enhanced crucible performance in wafer production. It is the first product of HeraeusPhotovoltaics beyond metallization pastes and a leap in quality and yield for integrated PVmanufacturers.With HeraGlaze the wafer yield is increased by up to 4% and cell efficiency isimproved significantly. A higher wafer yield of 4% increases the output until 2020 to close to 2 billionwafers, resulting in approximately 9GW of extra power.
HeraGlaze is used in the very first step of the of the solar cell manufacturing process, when polycrystallinesilicon blocks are melted into a single silicon ingot. This early process is crucial for thequality of the ingots and thus for the quality of the final product – the solar wafers.
The new product of Heraeus comes as a slurry, which is applied on the porous surface of thecrucibles. This can be done directly at the production site of the customer and allows to retrofit orupgrade existing crucibles. As a result, the solution is very cost-efficient as no additional expenditureson new crucibles are required.
A new chapter as technology leader
HeraGlaze acts as a barrier and prevents that thermally induced impurities such as iron aretransferred from the crucible into the silicon ingot during the melting and crystallization of silicon. Thehigher wafer yield is achieved by increasing the usable section of a silicon ingot.
“HeraGlaze opens a new chapter in our roadmap as a technology leader and provides our customerswith more added value. It’s our first product beyond solar cell metallization and another R&Dlandmark, which enables our customers to realize further efficiency gains,” says Andreas Liebheit,President of Heraeus Photovoltaics.
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