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James Holloway - Mar 17, 2012 4:30 pm UTC

A small Mississippi solar panel factory that, until this week, had been working in semi-secrecy, claims that its unique manufacturing process allows photovoltaic panels to be produced at almost half the cost of conventional methods. The key, according to Twin Creeks Technologies, is in the thinness of its monocrystalline wafers, dramatically reducing the material required.

Where conventional solar wafers can be sliced down to about 180 micrometers in thickness, Twin Creeks is able to produce laminas only 20 micrometers wide using what it calls its "Hyperion" manufacturing system.

This system employs a technique Twin Creeks calls Proton Induced Exfoliation. During this process, hydrogen ions are embedded into layers within standard silicon monocrystalline wafers without altering the wafer's inherent characteristics. The ions are embedded using a high-voltage, high-current ion accelerator which Twin Creeks CEO Siva Sivaram told Technology Review is "10 times more powerful" than any accelerator commercially available. The embedded depth is precisely controlled via the voltage of the accelerator beam.

When the ion layer is heated inside a furnace, a thin lamina of the host wafter is separated from the rest. The process can be repeated with the same wafer to extract up to 10 usable layers. A metal-coating is applied to each layer to add strength.

Twin Creeks claims that only 10 percent of a standard wafer performs useful work. Though the company has not announced specific performance figures for panels created with its technology, it says that solar cells, LEDs and other devices made with its skinny laminae have "similar or better levels of performance" than those made using conventional wafers.

Though conventional solar wafer thickness has come down over the years, the 20-micrometer wafer available now is a disruptive breakthough. But rather than position itself as usurper, Twin Creeks seems to be pitching its manufacturing technology to established solar panel manufacturers rather than selling solar cells itself. The company claims that a factory equipped with its technology can manufacture solar cells for 40 cents per Watt. By comparison First Solar, which positions itself as the "premier provider of comprehensive PV solar systems", announced only last month that it had cut costs to 73 cents per Watt.

Research technologies (thin-wafers included) that threaten to multiply the efficiency of photovoltaic panels emerge with clockwork regularity, but generally such developments are far from proven at the commercial level. By contrast, Twin Creeks claims its Hyperion 3 systems are available for shipment immediately, and can individually produce 1.5 million skinny wafers—sufficient for over 6MW of solar cells—per year.

The exfoliation method is also applicable to germanium, silicon carbide, gallium nitride and other III-V compounds. Though Twin Creeks' initial focus is on solar cells, it claims its process is suitable in the manufacture of LEDs, power electronics equipment, image sensors and 3D packaging.

Listing image by Image courtesy of Twin Creeks Technologies

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