XsunX Inc. develops advanced, thin-film photovoltaic (TFPV) solar cell technologies and manufacturing processes. The company recently completed the development of a co-evaporation processing chamber design that integrates several thermal evaporation techniques in one process to produce the Copper Indium Gallium diSelenide (CIGS) solar cell’s absorber layer.
Chief Executive Tom Djokovich said the achievement is integral to the company’s efforts and will allow the company to work on commercializing its manufacturing process.
“This development is crucial to both the equipment and process technology side of our efforts,” Djokovich stated in the press release. “The completion of this chamber converges several operations that we have been developing separately, allowing all of the processes necessary to produce the CIGS layer for our cross-industry technology to work in unison. This development increases the rate with which we can develop this new technology towards our initial baseline commercialization goals. This is a fundamental next step in our plan to commercialize our hybrid CIGS manufacturing process, and deliver a potential replacement solution for the use of silicon.”
According to the press release, XsunX’s system utilizes material handling and automation technologies from the hard disk equipment industry and adapts them to TFPV co-evaporation processes to configure the absorber layer, or solar power conversion portion of the cell, which produces low-cost solar cells.
“This integration of numerous processing technologies into a single chamber design will allow us to begin testing the value of hard disk material handling and systems management technologies,” XsunX’s CTO Robert Wendt stated. “From the start, we envisioned this chamber as the key to our ability to viably produce commercial quantities of CIGS solar cells using small-area processing techniques.”
Wendt added that the company’s achievements revolve around its co-evaporation process.
“We believe that a key component to our success lies in our use of the co-evaporation process on individual small-area substrates, or wafers similar in size to silicon wafers, to produce the solar absorbing portion of the solar cell,” Wendt stated.
XsunX said the experimentation and design alterations to its equipment and technology reflects the company’s advances in its intellectual capital portfolio.
“From the beginning, we envisioned the completion of the chamber design, and its co-evaporation system, as a differentiating feat of the scientific team – a demonstration of their engineering and development prowess,” noted Djokovich.
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