FHR intro­duces highly productive CIGS foil coating solutions for the photo­vol­taics industry and presents outstanding results in layer depos­ition of trans­parent electrodes (TCO)

After ship­ping 12 CIGS coat­ing sys­tems mainly for R&D pur­poses and pilot lines world­wide, FHR Anla­gen­bau cur­rently com­mis­sions roll-to-roll foil coat­ing sys­tems that achieve through­put and com­pet­it­ive­ness com­par­able with highly pro­duct­ive CIGS depos­ition sys­tems for glass sub­strates. Optim­ally adjus­ted sput­ter and evap­or­a­tion pro­cesses allow stable char­ac­ter­ist­ics of thin back con­tact, absorber and front con­tact lay­ers along depos­ition width and length span­ning sev­eral kilo­met­ers. Cur­rently, oper­at­ing time is only lim­ited by avail­able reel length of highly tem­per­at­ure-stable plastic foil.The trans­par­ent con­duct­ive elec­trode (Trans­par­ent Con­duct­ive Oxide, TCO) plays a decis­ive role in CIGS solar cell man­u­fac­tur­ing.

To achieve a good absorp­tion of sun­light and a good trans­mis­sion of elec­tri­city sim­ul­tan­eously, the TCO layer requires a good light trans­mis­sion and a high elec­tric con­duct­iv­ity. The latest equip­ment gen­er­a­tion of FHR Anla­gen­bau achieves excel­lent layer char­ac­ter­ist­ics: For 1000 mm wide TCO lay­ers remark­ably low spe­cific elec­trical res­istiv­it­ies of 5 × 10^-4 Ohm × cm at a high trans­mis­sion rate of 87 % are achieved. For com­par­ison only: uncoated glass panes offer a trans­mis­sion of approx­im­ately 92 %.In addi­tion to foil coat­ing solu­tions for the photo­vol­ta­ics industry FHR Anla­gen­bau presents on this year’s EU PVSEC in Frank­furt/​Main its product port­fo­lio in the field of sput­ter tar­gets and inline pro­duc­tion plants.