Sputtering Targets for Photovoltaics

The growing demand for renewable energy sources has led to a boom in the photovoltaic (PV) industry. With emerging PV technologies and processes, Heraeus sputtering targets production, process know-how & supply capabilities are in great demand by PV module manufacturers.

Today’s burgeoning PV industry needs totally new material compositions, with varying target geometries and differing ratios of existing alloys and compositions.

Also our customers are looking for a quick scale up. It’s key to lay out the R&D goals from the start to ensure that the resulting target will transfer seamlessly to fullblown commercial production. In addition, today’s PV customers need higher numbers of qualification sputtering targets, with the correct geometry, larger targets for larger deposition systems, and sometimes, even new, rotatable target types – mostly “overnight.”

Increasingly, being able to deliver a large variety of target types in the short term is very important. With multi-million dollar investments in new fabs in the balance, it’s equally important to maintain a reliable source for sputter materials. Heraeus has PV projects running in Europe, the U.S. and in Asia, and any delays in production would be problematic.

With the obvious synergies of working with large area sputtering targets, Heraeus deploys numerous manufacturing technologies (casting, powder metallurgy, spraying, bonding) in almost all form-factors, planar or cylindrical and up to 4 meters in length.

A promising technology is thin film photovoltaics. The thin semiconducting layers made of amorphous silicon, cadmium telluride or copper indium (gallium) - diselenid, short CIS and/or CIGS are usually built on a glass substrate and only about a thousandth of millimeters thin, thus a hundred times thinner than wafer based solar cells and requires much less material.

Heraeus, in cooperation with Photovoltaic customers and coating system manufacturers, has developed a variety of sputtering targets for most layers found in the different types of Photovoltaic cells such as
CIGS, Si based thin films, CdTe and wafer based cells.

Our worldwide dedicated development resources, in-house technologies and manufacturing make Heraeus your reliable partner for development and secured delivery of all your current and future sputtering target needs for Photovoltaic applications.