News 2023

Every day several million silicon wafers are being produced worldwide for the photovoltaic industry, and the demand is rising sharply. At the same time, the industry is increasingly switching to large wafer formats with an edge length of up to 210 mm. Processing these wafers to produce large-format solar cells with at least the same quality and cycle rate as conventionally sized solar cells presents equipment manufacturers with new challenges, especially for laser processing. To ensure that this processing step does not become a bottleneck in the future, a research team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE has developed a novel system concept with industrial partners, which relies on the clever combination of On-the-Fly processing with ultra-fast scanning technology and lasers, high-end optics and sensor technology. Following the successful demonstration of the first system prototype in 2022, which achieved an effective throughput of over 15,000 wafers per hour, a second prototype that uses UV light to create particularly small structures is now in use at Fraunhofer ISE.

Several Fraunhofer institutes and facilities, including the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE and other partners, are working to establish the large-scale production of green hydrogen and its derivatives in Chile. The core of the project, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), is to research the potential for the production of hydrogen and liquid fuels from solar energy. In addition to the technical issues, the project partners are also investigating the economic, logistical, and socio-economic aspects. They are also supporting the installation of a pilot facility for the production of climate-neutral methanol and dimethyl ether in Chile.