SolarPV.TV - Charlie Gay, President Of Applied Materials Solar About Strategy In TF After SunFabs Failure And Pegaso Modular Platform

The Applied Baccini Pegaso system is Applied Materials' most advanced platform for crystalline silicon PV cell production. As cell manufacturers strive to drive down cost per watt, there is a need in the market today for a platform that can deliver both scale and technology simultaneously. The Pegaso system is the industry?s first truly modular platform and marks a new benchmark in yield and print precision at more than twice the throughput as conventional systems in the same footprint.

The platform?s independent dual lanes and print heads enable 50% production capacity at all times, even during preventive maintenance, boosting system uptime significantly. This, in addition to a host of other features like automatic wafer inspection and rejection, dual sided maintenance access, offline module repair and quick screen change enable the Pegaso system to achieve the highest uptime of any cell manufacturing system available.

The Pegaso system?s ultra-gentle wafer handling system, which incorporates advanced features such as the contact-less Bernoulli flipper and sorter achieves a remarkably low breakage rate of less than 0.15%. Combining a breakage rate this low with high throughput in order to achieve high yield is what differentiates Pegaso from all the other systems available in the market today. High yield along with high system uptime delivers a net throughput >2700 wph.

Powering the Pegaso platform is an all-new screen printing technology. The Pegaso-XP printer marks a revolution in screen printing, achieving an unprecedented print accuracy of <8?m and precision of ?10?m. An integrated high resolution machine vision system enables exact pattern detection and alignment for high accuracy and precision. High levels of print accuracy and precision are critical capabilities to implement advanced cell designs, increase cell efficiency and lower cost.

The uniquely modular Pegaso platform can easily be configured for specific requirements. Customers can rapidly extend the system to accommodate additional process steps and can use the same platform for new applications by adding or replacing existing modules.