World's First Silicon-Ink Based Solar Cell Pilot Production Completed

[jpak]

http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=8892.php

Roth & Rau AG and Innovalight have completed the installation of the world’s first silicon-ink based solar cell production line. This first pilot manufacturing line has been built and installed at Innovalight, in Sunnyvale, California and has been qualified to operational capability over the last two months of 2008.

“The potential to lower costs by combining Innovalight’s silicon-ink platform and conventional silicon solar cell technology is very impressive”, commented Dr. Dietmar Roth, CEO of Roth & Rau AG, ”Combining the strength of Roth & Rau’s manufacturing expertise and Innovalight’s silicon nanotechnology has enormous potential in the marketplace”, he added.

The pilot line combines the qualities and cost benefits of crystal silicon wafer technology with elegant silicon-ink processing technology to produce low cost, high performance solar cells. Roth & Rau installed the majority of the solar cell manufacturing equipment which has been integrated with Innovalight’s custom proprietary inkjet printing platform and silicon-ink manufacturing systems. This first pilot manufacturing platform installed at Innovalight has the capability of producing 10 Megawatts of solar power and can be easily scaled to many hundreds of megawatts of electricity production.

“Roth & Rau has been a terrific partner to work with,” said Conrad Burke, President & Chief Executive at Innovalight. “They bring a great deal of manufacturing experience to this relationship as we continue to develop our technology toward commercialization,” he added.

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[DCKit]

1. No word on cost in the article or the company website.

All they say is "lower cost". Darn.