News

5 March 2009

 

Veeco to supply CIGS PV manufacturing equipment to Daiyang Metal

Veeco Instruments Inc of Plainview, NY, USA has entered into a strategic partnership to supply equipment for manufacturing CIGS (copper indium gallium diselenide) solar cells to Daiyang Metal Co Ltd of Seoul, Korea, which produces cold rolled stainless steel but is entering the CIGS solar cell market.

As a first milestone in the relationship, in order to build a thin-film CIGS solar cell production line in Yesan, Korea, Daiyang has placed an initial multi-million dollar purchase order with Veeco for its complement of FastFlex Web Coating Systems, consisting of one Mo (molybdenum) deposition system, one TCO (Transparent Conductive Oxide) deposition system, and two CIGS deposition systems. Veeco expects to ship the systems in fourth-quarter 2009, after which it expects to firm up a follow-on order with Daiyang.

“Daiyang Metal has an aggressive multi-year, multi-site plan to become a leading worldwide manufacturer of CIGS solar cells,” says Kang Daiyang’s CEO Chan Ku. “Our short-term goal is to aggressively ramp to 200MW capacity during 2010 and 2011, which will entail the purchase of additional Veeco systems. Ultimately it is our goal to achieve one gigawatt of CIGS production capacity by 2013,” he adds.

“We spent a lot of time researching and surveying the suppliers of CIGS manufacturing tools, and were very impressed with the level of process support and collaboration we received from Veeco during that period,” Ku continues.

“This partnership is especially important to us because together, with Daiyang as the substrate manufacturer and Veeco as the production equipment supplier, we can accelerate the solar industry’s efficiency roadmap,” says Veeco’s CEO John R. Peeler. “CIGS is emerging as the next-generation solar technology, offering combined benefits of higher efficiencies and lower costs when compared with silicon.”

Market research firm Nanomarkets estimates that CIGS production capacity will reach 1.4GW in 2012 and 4.9GW in 2015 (a 30-fold increase over 2008’s 152MW). CIGS solar cells offer the broadest range of applications of any thin-film solar technology, including solar farms, building-integrated PVs (BIPVs), flat and pitched roofs, rooftop shingles, and portable devices.

“Daiyang’s selection of Veeco is confirmation of our leadership in thermal evaporation sources,” claims Piero Sferlazzo, senior VP of Veeco’s Solar Equipment business. “Thermal source technology is quickly becoming the preferred CIGS deposition method because it provides customers with high-volume, low-cost manufacturing solutions that drive down the manufacturing cost per watt,” he adds.

Veeco says that its FastFlex platform has a flexible architecture with high uptime that can be configured to specific needs, with a choice of rotary or planar magnetrons for high-throughput, high-temperature effusion sources, and substrate sizes up to 1m wide.

See related item:

Despite record MBE orders for solar, Veeco expects 36-46% sales dip in Q1

Search: Veeco CIGS solar cells

Visit: www.daiyangmetal.co.kr

Visit: www.veeco.com