ATS's fully-automated solar cell lines

The company's parent, ATS, has a strong background in the automation of
manufacturing processes. This has enabled Photowatt to install two new fullyautomated
high volume PV cell and module manufacturing lines which are shown in the
photo on the right. These lines started operating in 2000 and can undertake the screen
printing of the rear and front metallisation pastes, drying and firing of the pastes,
deposition of the anti-reflective coating (ARC), sorting, ribbon soldering, lamination of
the protective insulation layer and module assembly.
Today, the standard size of a multi-crystalline Si cell is 125 x 125 mm (5 inches square)
with a thickness of 300 Mm. Using a titanium dioxide anti-reflective coating, Photowatt's
solar cell efficiency was about 13 per cent. More recently, using new silicon nitride antireflective
coating technology, this efficiency has been improved to over 15 per cent on
the company's own multi-crystalline silicon.