Semiconductor Industry Helps To green Solar

摘要

Photovoltaics (PV) manufacturing faces two important challenges as it emerges as a significant new industry. First, it must reach parity in cost per watt with conventional sources of electricity, and second, it must ensure that it maintains a "green" manufacturing profile so that the environmental benefits of solar power are not negated by pollution resulting from the solar cell manufacturing process itself (Fig. 1). Historically, solar cell manufacturing has been based largely on semiconductor technology, but is now also embracing flat panel display (FPD) manufacturing techniques to produce large solar panels. This offers PV manufacturers an excellent opportunity to benefit from lessons learned over the past 20 years in the semiconductor and FPD industries to reduce both manufacturing costs and environmental impact.