Optimizing Solar Cells, One Chemical at a Time

The Solar Energy transition is underway. As the industry reaches toward grid parity, chemical processing will deliver the cost, processing and efficiency advantages to get us there. MacDermid Inc., a world leader in specialty chemicals, brings cutting-edge innovation and world-renowned technical service excellence to your facilities, anywhere, anytime. Our turn-key chemistry and equipment packages enable the efficiency gains you need to win the brightest of futures.

Paste Augmentation

Electroless Silver Efficiency Gains for Silicon Cells
Conventional screened silver paste is well established, but leaves room for improvement – literally. Deposition of solid silver within the sintered paste voids brings the bulk conductivity up and allows improved conductivity with thinner busbars and fingers. Overall efficiency can be increased by 0.3-0.5% with this fast, non-contact electroless silver process. With a small allocation of footprint in an existing PV manufacturing location, the efficiency increase is a low-risk way to lower your cost per watt in the near-term.

Patterning And Etching

Non-Contact Patterning in Preparationof Conductor Formation
Use of thinner silicon allows for the lowest cost crystalline cells, but requires off-contact conductor formation. Ink-jet resist, followed by fast chemical etching, is the most productive and cost-competitive patterning method. Our UV resist enables dramatic finger width resolution, for a 75% reduction in shadowing; a significant advantage for your customers.

Metal Seed Layers

Electroless Nickel Alloy Plating
The highest efficiency, lowest cost cell designs call for thin wafers, superior contacts and an effective barrier coating. As the world leader in electroless nickel, MacDermid delivers perfectly controlled, ultra-thin,trouble-free nickel deposition. Thickness uniformity allows very thin emitter geometries, preventing shunts and minimizing recombination.

Plated Metal Conductors

Electroless and Electrolytic Nickel, Copper, Silver and Tin Plating
Plated metal conductors significantly out-perform sintered paste for conductivity, allowing finger width reductions to 25 microns or less. Select from electroless or electrolytic processing to achieve up to 1.5% increases (absolute) in cell efficiency compared to conventional cell manufacture, all at a reduced overall cost. The chemical deposition is compatible with laser and etch-resist techniques for exposing silicon through the anti-reflective coating.

Optimized Screen Printing

Comprehensive Systems Allowing Finer Resolution and Thicker Paste Deposition
For today's conventional screen-printed cells, MacDermid offers fundamental insights into improving the speed, quality and resolution of PV printing. Superior coatings, emulsions, and supporting chemical processes enable 50 micron line printing control to set you apart from commodity cell manufacturers. From the world leaders in screen imaging technology.

Advanced Technologies and Functional Support Chemicals

Chemicals To Improve Every Aspect of Your PV Designs
From next generation light-trapping layers on silicon, to multi-functionalfilms for flexible PV; from improved wafer cleaners to new BSE plating processing; ask MacDermid Photovoltaics what we can do to make your PV dreams a reality.