Meco CPL
The Meco Cell Plating Line (CPL) builds on the proven and robust technology of the Meco EPL, which has established a strong reputation in semiconductor leadframe plating with over 400 machines installed worldwide.
In photovoltaic cell production, the majority of silicon cells use screen-printed silver paste on the front side of the wafer, followed by a firing step to form electrical contact with the cell emitter. While this method is well established, there is room for efficiency improvements.
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100% Ag paste saving
3,000 UPH Output
50 - 100 MW Capacity
5 x 5 / 6 x 6" Cell size
Description
Typically, contact fingers are screen printed at widths of 90-100 microns to ensure sufficient electrical conductivity. However, reducing the contact finger width to increase the active cell area and reduce shading is limited by the poor aspect ratio of screen-printed fingers, which increases their resistance and limits efficiency gains.
Meco’s Cell Plating Line offers a practical solution to this challenge. The process begins with a narrow, thin seed layer of silver paste, onto which electroplating of silver or Ni-Cu-Sn is applied to enhance the electrical conductivity of the contact fingers. This approach allows for narrower contact fingers with improved conductivity, resulting in an absolute cell efficiency gain of 0.3% to 0.5%. Additionally, the use of a thin seed layer reduces the consumption of expensive silver paste, enabling a return on investment (RoI) of less than one year.
The Meco CPL supports a throughput of 1,500 to 3,000 cells per hour, making it a highly efficient and cost-effective solution for solar cell manufacturers seeking to improve performance and reduce material costs.
Features
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Key features
- Vertical product handling
- Low drag-out of plating chemicals
- Compact machine design/easy to maintain
- Inline plating process/high up time
- Efficiency improvement: 0.3 – 0.5 % (abs.) with seed-and-plate
- Proven machine concept (> 400 machines in semiconductor industry)
- Ideal platform for plating of Interdigitated Back Contact (IBC) cells where a thick Cu-Sn layer is plated on the rearside electrode
- Ideal platform for plating of HIT cells as Cu plating drastically reduces the high metallization costs associated with heterojunction cells
- Plating on frontside and backside at the same time for metallization (plating) of bi-facial cells such as HIT cells
- Plating of n-type cells
- Process start-up by Meco
Specifications
The Meco CPL in numbers
Specifications
| Cell size | 5 x 5″, 6 x 6″ |
| Cell type | mono-c, multi-c |
| Cell technology | p-type, n-type, bifacial, MWT, Back Contact (IBC), HIT cells |
| Metal options | Ag, Ni-Cu-Sn, Cu-Sn (for IBC) |
| Plating thickness, typical | Ag: 5-7 µm , Ni : 1 µm , Cu : 8 µm , Sn : 2-3 µm |
| Process speed | 1,500 – 3,000 UPH (pilot line: 100 – 500 UPH) |
| Production capacity | 50 – 100 MW |
