YIELDMANAGEMENT
A
lthough photovoltaic (PV) structure and analysis engine optimised for PV
manufacturing has been with us for production. The tool provides analysis of process
decades it is only recently that it has captured the performance information, allowing manufacturers
global imagination of industry and entrepreneurs. to discover and act upon opportunities to improve
The semiconductor industry has proven to be a the energy conversion efficiency of their products.
vital link for PV manufacturers seeking grid parity Engineers can monitor the health of a complete
status as there are some similar manufacturing production line and identify problems at a tool and
needs. In high tech manufacturing there are sub-component and materials level. Without such a
gradual improvements in processes and tool it could take hours to determine a problem.
infrastructures. These incremental improvements
occur as competition drives companies to seek “We recognized that increased competitiveness
advantage through innovation. The more and demand in the solar industry requires PV
competition the more likely companies seek to manufacturers to focus on cell efficiency to
improve existing practices. maximize margins,” said Paul McLaughlin,
Chairman and CEO at Rudolph. “Discover Solar
For the semiconductor industry this occurs as the was designed to help PV manufacturers
cost of moving to technology nodes became accomplish this, while at the same time, produce
exponentially higher. With Moore’s Law as a cost reductions that will further help the industry
catalyst the industry has a metric for expectations reach ‘grid parity’. While it builds on experience in
in device performance at each node. PV IC manufacturing, Discover Solar was designed to
manufacturing is still at an early stage with a accommodate the critically important differences in
number of competing manufacturing types. the PV fabrication process.”
Despite the competition grid parity provides an
overall driver for the industry through a Cost per Asking the right questions
21
Watt (CPW) metric. Regardless of techical When the new product was announced, Editor in
capability, whoever maintains the lowest CPW will Chief of Solar, David Ridsdale decided to find out
www
gain the most market share. more about the new offering as sometimes claims
.solar
outweigh the possibility. With PV companies keen
Different appraoches can be used to reduce CPW. to meet their own ‘Law’ of grid parity it seemed
-pv-management.com
The PV industry is maturing so much focus amazing that PV manufacturers were not
remains on turnkey solutions or incremental employing such data analysis in their
improvements. The semiconductor industry is a manufacturing. A few phone calls later and Solar
more mature concern and with rising costs for discovered that not only were such tools minimally
node transition has looked to more intensive yield employed but that many manufacturers had little
management solutions to improve performance knowledge of data between the tool sets they were
and reduce costs as well as node transition. using. In the earlier days of IC manufacturing there
Issue I 2009
was a great deal of buck passing between tool
One semiconductor based company realised that providers and manufacturers when manufacturing
yield management tools in the IC sector could expectations were not met. Many tool providers
provide solutions for PV manufacturers as they
seek to improve CPW by improving manufacturing
practices. With the current fiscal crisis this sort of
innovation could make or break some companies.
Discovering the true costs
Rudolph Technologies has been involved with high
performance process control metrology, defect
inspection and data analysis systems in the
semiconductor device industry for a number of
years and realised the expertise they have
developed could assist CPW goals.Their initial plan
was to transfer a successful semiconductor yield
management tool directly to PV assuming there
were more similarities than differences. Early
efforts soon showed otherwise and the company
developed a PV specific version called Discover
Solar that incorporates a re-engineered database
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