Nanotechnology from Gigatools
Since I’m not at Semicon West this week to talk to any of the industry movers and shakers, I will take certain liberties to comment on a recent EDN interview with Applied Materials CEO, Mike Splinter.
Ed Sperling looked to extract some information about AMAT’s success in the tool business. Splinter pointed to recognizing and concentrating on what Applied was best at:
- thin films
- complex system engineering
- global infrastructure
Certainly, there are many organizations that need to take the approach Applied did as they got out of the implant business to focus on thin film technology. Hoping for some clarification on that favorite buzz word - nanotech - Sperling asked Splinter for his thoughts. Unfortunately, Splinter described thin films as nanotech because of their thickness (or lack thereof, I suppose). In that case, nanotechnology isn’t really new since thin films have been around for optics and other purposes since before the microelectronics industry learned to walk.
But let’s not dispute their prowess in this area. Applied has moved aggressively into the solar cell technology space. “Anyplace where there is competition, we’ve won—at least so far,” as Splinter described their success in this new market. And solar panel technology - outside of the single crystal wafer variety - relies heavily on thin film technology. Splinter cited the 8.5 layers created in their process as a big lead over the competition.
Solar panel fabrication is also tailor-made for Applied’s second corporate strength - engineering big, complex tools. As you can well imagine, converting sunlight into useful quantities of energy for the power grid requires a lot of silicon real estate. To get the cost per watt to a level competitive with the industrial revolution era technology we currently depend upon, you also need each panel to be huge. Therefore, the reactors and handling tools need to be commensurately large.
Applied is also perfectly positioned to deal with one more aspect of the gigantic nature of panels for solar energy farms. They have a truly global presence. Splinter offered this simple explanation, “You can’t fit many panels into the belly of a 747.” Panel production will be highly localized, and this is evident in the many ongoing announcements and speculation on new solar panel production facilities all over the world.
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Andrew P said,
July 20, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Hmmm… That last quote about “You can’t fit many panels into the belly of a 747.” makes me wonder how closely they’re following advances in nanotech as it applies to printed manufacturing and flexible substrate techniques.
With a flexible substrate you could ship it in rolls or sheets, in more forgiving packaging. Also, the printed manufacturing approaches are supposed to be orders of magnitude cheaper to develop, deploy and maintain. That could leapfrog AMAT’s production rates and global distribution of facilities advantage as it applies to photovoltaics.
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
Mark Wendman said,
August 11, 2007 at 9:17 am
Interesting discussion.
AMAT certainly casts a large shadow on the field of conventional photovoltatics thin film manufacturing equipment. The hiring by Splinter of Dr. Charles Gay is testament to the serious intent of the firm to play a dominant role in this market space.
But many of the market dynamics in solar are veering away from traditional strengths of AMAT, and the process equipment technology presently in their and Applied Films portfolio ( their new $500m acquisition of Applied Films, a mostly european heavy equipment supplier in thin films ) might not play into where solar is likely moving to in the next few years.
Andrew is correct in intimating that roll to roll photovoltaic films are likely the future, the question is how quickly will they get well established in the marketplace, and how competitive will be the products from roll to roll ? Roll to Roll processing for high rel and efficiency is as yet unproven as to competitiveness.
Yet if a cost effective high performance reliable roll to roll processed photovoltaic cell technology can be fielded, then Applied is not sitting so pretty, as their portfolio of largely heavy equipment for solid substrates may be far less valuable than intended. And yes Applied Films has roll to roll process equipment, but this is a small fraction of the equipment portfolio.
It is noteworthy that Applied Films was not a terribly profitable operation in the past (changing hands a few times in the past decade), and while AMAT will no doubt considerably improve execution, the intended market segment in solar is notoriously price sensitive, as such not conducive to the typical margins that AMAT is used to.
The commanding presence of AMAT in the integrated circuits industry is not guaranteed to be replicated in the very cost sensitive photovoltaics business.
While conventional hard substrate photovoltaics are presently the norm, the industry is hard at work in developing low cost yet higher performance solutions, with a variety of novel technologies.
Photovoltaics are a far different beast than anything done in the integrated circuits industry. Just for one, final processed solar cell wafers run around $10-25 finished solar cells. That is a wake up reality check for the viability of heavy equipment with high capital costs per wafer. Even the equipment tools for Flat Panel Displays might prove to be inefficient in the competitive landscape as technologies are brought to market.
For some perspective on the various technical dynamics in play read some of the prior blog posts I have done over the past year +.
Here are links to the articles I have written on my Nanotech blog related to photovoltaics
http://mark-nano.blogspot.com/2006/07/eicke-webers-calisolar-improved.html
http://mark-nano.blogspot.com/2006/09/pictures-of-metallurgical-silicon.html
http://mark-nano.blogspot.com/2006/03/solaicx-photovoltaic-silicon-crystal.html
a technology for which I am co-inventor(arose from 3 weeks of reading)
http://mark-nano.blogspot.com/2007/04/advanced-thin-silicon-solar-cells-tom.html
http://mark-nano.blogspot.com/2006/03/curious-about-relative-importance-of.html
http://mark-nano.blogspot.com/2006/03/cyriums-39-efficient-monolithic.html
http://mark-nano.blogspot.com/2006/02/another-puzzle-this-time-thin-films.html
http://mark-nano.blogspot.com/2006/02/on-delay-cash-needs-of-solar-cell.html
http://mark-nano.blogspot.com/2006/02/konarkas-probable-austrian-development.html
One will gather that there are significant changes being attempted to reduce $/watt, and one can hardly predict the outcome of the numerous innovations presently under development. My posts only reflect a small part of the innovation landscape in contemporary leading edge photovoltaic development efforts.