Photowatt chooses Dupont's Solamet materials for its PV solar cells

For many years, Photowatt has been a European leader in the manufacture of
photovoltaic (PV) solar cells. Since 1997, the company, based at Bourgoin-Jallieu, near
Lyon, France, has been a part of ATS (Automation Tooling Systems), a large
multinational concern with its headquarters in Toronto, Canada. ATS specializes in the
fabrication of automated production lines for the automotive and electronics industries.

In 2001, the PV market grew by 39 per cent,
based on power in megawatts (MWp), and Photowatt is well positioned to take advantage of this buoyant market. Like most large PV manufacturers, the company has increased capacity every year to cope with demand and, between 1995 and 2002, its production capacity has increased 10-fold, from 2 to 20 MW.

Photowatt has an advantage in the industry by being a vertically-integrated PV cell manufacturer with the capability to produce solar panels from silicon feedstock. It can therefore control all of the intermediate processing and manufacturing steps, including ingot casting, silicon wire sawing, solar cell metallisation, lamination and assembly.