Despatch Industries, a solar manufacturing equipment provider, has developed SolectFire technology for its CF Series firing furnace platform. Results of SolectFire production testing have demonstrated efficiency gains and additional flexibility to upstream processes and alternative pastes, Despatch says.
SolectFire opens the firing process window and gives the operator control of the top and bottom of each firing zone. Each side of the cell can also be fired at different temperatures. The decoupling technology allows solar cell manufacturers to make specific adjustments and modifications to their firing profiles to accommodate different types of pastes and cell architectures.
‘Through research, testing and working closely with our customers, we have discovered that peak firing control is the most important contributor to reaching higher cell efficiencies,’ says Erik Anderson, product manager at Despatch Solar.