As a special highlight Schmid shows in a separated area of the exhibition booth a wafer line in throughput, consisting of Wafer Singulation, Turning Station, Cleaning Line, Pick+PlaceRobot and MetrologySorter. In well prooven Schmid-tradition: with outstanding handling features, high throughput as well as sophisticated and detailed solutions ready for production.
The Wafer Singulation gets loaded with cleaned wafers in the Schmid cassettes (intern. patents pending). The wafers are singularized in the water bath: by this method mechanical stress is reduced to a minimum. Independent process lanes increase flexibility and minimize downtime periods. Subsequently the separation lanes feed the cleaning lanes, at whose output the wafers are brought together again on one lane by means of a bernoulli-gripper. Contact-free measuring and classification follows: with regard to cracks, break-outs of edges and shells, holes, contaminations/scratches, deformation, geometry, thickness and saw damages, optionally also with regard to µ-crack and life time. After the wafers have passed the testing units they are laid down respectively slide softly into the Schmid boxes.
The Schmid Wafer-Inline-System is fully automated; no manual handling is required. No comparable inline-automation equipment is available on the market.
In the freely accessible area on the exhibition booth Schmid shows the following process modules:
Alkaline Texturing – A World´s First –
Process: Removing the impurities caused by wire sawing (monocrystalline wafers) and surface texturing – first time in horizontal throughput.
The Schmid advantage: Stable and most uniform etching results at low process costs and high repeating accuracy .
Light Induced Plating LIP
Process: Electrolytic metallization of solar cells on the emitter side.
The Schmid advantage: Uniform silver deposition at increased cell efficiency and higher conductivity.
Phosphorus Doper
Process: Generation of emitter coating on the surface of the solar cell.
The Schmid advantage: Simple integration in all horizontal wet processes without additional rearrangement of cells; micro fine, highly homogeneous phosphoric acid layering
Inkjet System DOD2000
Process: Digital inkjet printing of solar cells with etch resist as basis for novel structuring processes (front and rear side).
The Schmid advantage: Contactless printing at highest positioning accuracy.
Single-Side Wet-Chemical Edge Isolation
Process: Wet-chemical electrical isolation (front from rear side) of solar cells.
The Schmid advantage: Shorter and more stable process by automatic exchange of the process liquid as well as homogeneous etch results over the whole rear side without damaging the front side emitter.
Laser based Edge Isolation LTM2000
Process: Laser based electrical isolation (front from rear side) of solar cells – as an alternative to wet-chemical edge isolation; the LTM 2000 can be applied also for structuring of solar cells.
The Schmid advantage: Processing of different wafer sizes in one single line with automatic synchronisation at high throughput speeds.
Loader LWB 3000
Process: Fully automatic loading of wafers/cells with a capacity of 3000 pcs/hour.
The Schmid advantage: Automatic singulation at lowest breakage rate.
Buffer
Process: Intermediate storage (input resp. output) of wafers/cells.
The Schmid advantage: Equipped with two magazines which can be controlled individually.
Transport module
Process: Transport system, designed for four lanes.
The Schmid advantage: Variable speed control of the individual lanes and simplified maintenance at minimized downtime periods.