Drying, sintering and string soldering--the manufacturing of solar cells--requires heat in many of the individual production steps. Infrared radiation is a high energy, contact-free method of heat transfer which saves time and production space.

Infrared can be applied to several phases of photovoltaics/solar cell manufacture, including:

• doping and diffusion
• sintering
• tabbing and stringing
• many more.

Thanks to the newly developed quartz reflector, the heating of carrier materials before or during coating processes can be carried out more efficiently in vacuum or at high ambient temperatures.

Solar cells aim to make optimum use of solar energy. An anti-reflective coating provides a significantly better absorption performance for solar cells. This coating is deposited in vacuum and at high temperatures.

It has been established that such high temperature processes can be carried out in a significantly more stable fashion using infrared heaters featuring the new QRC® (quartz reflective coating) reflectors, so that process parameters such as the temperature or heating time can be better maintained. This increases the energy efficiency of the system.

Heraeus Noblelight works closely with their customers and offers infrared heaters which can be designed in terms of shape, size and spectrum to suit the relevant process.

The heating steps of some innovative processes are thus made possible, and complex heating processes can be reproduced to permit automation.

These examples are by no means a complete list. Infrared heat is an effective and efficient means of applying process heat in photovoltaics and many other applications.

Explore this site for application solutions employing infrared technology. Heraeus offers complete systems using infrared technology; we can design a system to meet your specific, unique and demanding needs.