Sixtron Targets Solar Makers Squeezed by Silane Costs

Sixtron Advanced Materials, a company that has developed an anti-reflective coating system for solar cells, said Tuesday that one of the world’s top three solar-cell-manufacturing-equipment suppliers has agreed to buy multiple coating systems with the aim of making all of its manufacturing lines “Sixtron compatible.”

The Montreal-based company’s system, called SunBox, enables companies to deposit anti-reflective coatings without using silane, the gas usually used to accomplish this task. That could help give customers an edge, as some industry insiders have predicted that a shortage could be on the way. Thin-film manufacturers use a good amount of silane, with the gas making up 3-6 percent of a panel’s bill of materials, according to Linde Electronics; as thin-film production ramps up, some in the industry, including traditional PV makers, have already reported price increases for the gas.

Although others in the industry expect silane prices to fall soon, manufacturers may also want to avoid using it because it’s a volatile gas that requires cumbersome safety equipment and procedures and can cause costly disruptions, due to unintended fires and worker injuries, Sixtron said. The SunBox — which the company describes as the size of a large refrigerator — eliminates the need for silane in monocrystalline solar-cell factories (which make up 80 percent of the solar market), saving manufacturers millions of dollars in silane infrastructure, including gas handling systems, monitors, blast walls and bunkers, Sixtron said.

Removing this “silane tax” can cut the manufacturing-equipment costs by up to 50 percent for the largest solar-cell makers, the company added. The gas produced by the SunBox deposits anti-reflective coatings with efficiencies “on par” with silane, the company claims, and the gas can also replace aluminum in another part of the process.

Sixtron said its customer has bought the SunBox systems for testing and design purposes, so it can make sure its future equipment lines are completely Sunbox ready, and may one day also decide to become a SunBox distributor. The company called the deal “a major validation,” demonstrating that a top equipment supplier expects high demand for the SunBox among its customers.

Sixtron didn’t disclose the name of its big customer, the size of the deal or the number of units included in the sale. But the world’s top three photovoltaic solar-cell manufacturing-equipment suppliers are Applied Materials in the United States, and Roth & Rau and Centrotherm in Germany, according to a VLSI Research report released earlier this month.

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