Photon Energy Systems has developed a process for making thin (<50u) single crystal silicon photovoltaic devices.
This process has 2 major advantages:
1) 5X reduction in silicon used - the major cost in modules is the silicon - this reduces the cost by a factor of 5X.
2) 20X reduction in cell processing resources. This allows processing equipment to have much greater throughput and reduces cell costs.

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3) All rear contact technology - Increases efficiency by 5-10% over conventional front contact cells.  Improved appearance with all dark front surface.

The process involves 2 major system steps:

1) Cell fabrication - this process uses conventional Cz or Fz single crystal silicon boules, cuts the boules into thick (typically 2mm) wafers, and then processes them into tens of thousands of thin cells. By processing the wafers from a small surface area to a very large surface area in each wafer, the processing resources needed to make each module is reduced by a factor of more than 20X.

2) Module fabrication - the cells are assembled using our unique parallel assembly tools into sub modules, similar to conventional solar cells. These sub modules are then assembled, laminated and framed into conventional solar panels.