By Bob Haavind, Editorial Director, Solid State Technology

While many potentially disruptive photovoltaic (PV) technologies are taking shape in laboratories, commercialization is often stalled by a lack of suitable tools for production. Vendors setting up production lines tend to make do with whatever process equipment is available, which keeps even mainstream production from being optimal. The bottom line: emerging solar industry needs help from equipment makers — or else PV companies will be forced to develop their own production tools to get new technologies into the market, charged Lawrence Kazmerski, director of the National Center for Photovoltaics, Golden, CO, at a SEMICON West panel on solar technology.

“Equipment is a huge issue,” Kazmerski said, “It’s Neanderthal compared to semiconductors.”

Germany and Japan are far ahead of the rest of the world in developing solar energy, together accounting for 70% of the world’s PV industry, with the US a distant third at 11%, indicated David Hockschild of PV Now, a California solar industry advocacy group. Of the top ten companies in the industry, including Sharp, Kyocera, Shell, and BP, none are from the US, he added.

California is by far the leading solar market in the US, accounting for 71% compared to 2.5% for New York in second place, followed by a few other states like Arizona and North Carolina. Yet the potential for this technology is huge in the United States, according to Hockschild, because it receives far more solar energy than countries such as Japan, China, and others.

San Francisco is so anxious to get away from conventional power plants, he explained, that a $100 million solar bond issue in 2001 won by 73% of the vote. One of the first projects at Moscone (where the SEMICON West show is held) involved several energy-saving measures along with a $3 million solar panel installation.

“The light bulbs were essentially heaters that emitted a little light,” Hockschild said, so new lamps were installed that not only are more energy-efficient, but also boosted light levels by 30%. The $7 million investment at Moscone will be paid back in eight years, he added.

Every time the solar industry doubles, costs go down about 20%, Hockschild estimates. He rattled off an array of successful showcase projects around the world, including rows of homes in the Netherlands with solar-integrated skylights and the “Carlisle House” in Massachusetts which feeds power back to the grid. He agreed that the US trails several other countries in developing and using alternative energy systems, but he cited efforts to push US efforts. Congress passed a 30% tax credit for solar installations, for example, and six states plus Washington, DC, now have solar set-asides.

There was “unanticipated euphoria” when a budget of $148 million was announced to back a Solar America Initiative this year, according to Kazmerski of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory — but Congress keeps chipping away at the program, which is now down to $139 million. Development efforts are built around a Solar Roadmap, with R&D focused on “closing the gaps,” both in technology and commercialization. He expects the nation will have 5-10GW of solar power installed by 2015, with California alone aiming for 2GW by 2016.

Still, these efforts pale in comparison to Japan and Germany. Kazmerski explained that in Japan, each home with solar power is paid 63 cents/kWh — more than it would cost for power from the grid. As a result, he added, some Japanese actually build systems on their neighbors’ roofs to take advantage of the subsidy. Japan hopes that its aggressive support will mean that by 2050 solar power will supply half of the nation’s electricity.

Germany’s program uses no federal money — instead, every user of grid electricity pays an extra incremental fee to support the cost of solar installations, Hockschild explained. The utilities thus provide a pool to pay back these costs over a 10-year period, and the electric companies also provide credits for solar-generated electricity fed back into the grid.

Photovoltaic technology is steadily evolving, according to Kazmerski. There are many exotic cells under development, but 95% of the solar panels installed so far use crystalline silicon — in fact, in 2005 over half of the world’s silicon wafer production went into solar energy production, he explained. The initial cells from Bell Labs in 1953 had less than 1% efficiency, but even so, by November of the following year the first modules were installed. Since then, he said, some 1.7GW of solar energy has been sold.

Three companies now make crystalline silicon PV cells with over 20% efficiency, according to Kazmerski. The most efficient silicon cells from SunPower have a surface roughed into tiny pyramids to bounce light around and they have anti-reflective coatings to capture more energy from the light. Efficiencies of 28%-29% can be achieved with more exotic materials, such as cadmium telluride and copper indium selenide, he said, and five companies in the Bay area alone have been set up to commercialize these technologies.

On space missions, gallium arsenide has displaced silicon, and concentrators enable efficiencies up to 39%. Soon, according to Kazmerski, multijuntion concentrator solar cells, with different materials tuned to varying parts of the sun’s spectrum, will push efficiencies over 40%. Originally, it was thought that large fields of solar panels would generate electricity to be distributed to nearby communities, but the localized power generation approach, with panels on rooftops, now leads the way instead. But the rising efficiencies of concentrator technologies, and the much higher cost of fossil fuels, may lead to more centralized power generation as well, particularly in highly sunlit areas such as Southern California, New Mexico and Arizona.

Down the road ten years and beyond, Kazmerski envisions disruptive technologies pushing photovoltaic efficiencies up to 50%, 60%, or even 70%. “But that may be 30 years away,” he cautioned. — B.H.

By Debra Vogler, Senior Editor

Anytime government gets into the act of giving money to any endeavor, one can almost imagine the industry holding its collective nose with a clothespin. The money is welcome, but the intrusion that may go along with it is not. Guests of SST On the Scene at SEMICON West shared their thoughts about government getting more involved, and what challenges the industry is facing now when it accepts such help. [CLICK HERE for the full list of interviews]

Kevin Fahey, GM of the FEI Co.’s nanoelectronics fab division [CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO], sees more of a mix in the way research is funded going forward. “It used to be that governments would fund everything from five years out or more¿you’d start to see venture money in the 2-5 year range, and companies in the 0-2 year range,” Fahey said. But now, “Everything is sliding forward — the VCs want their money back in 12 months, and the companies want to be seeing results in six months.”

As a result, there is more of a need for government money for things that will be in production within a couple years, Fahey thinks. “The easiest way to see this manifested is to look worldwide,” he said. “In this country, we tend to be used to the standard funding cycles. But if we look to Europe, we’re starting to see country-wide collaborations with national centers for microscopy and materials development.” Looking to the future, he said that there’s growing acceptance that governments will be involved whether it’s wanted or not. “You see places like Singapore, where there’s wonderful success from the government having helped out,” he noted.

David Dutton, CEO of Mattson Technology [CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO], thinks government participation is most effective when it understands how it can make free-market trade happen, such as incentives in certain areas or a lower tax base. “To me, it seems that government helps facilitate business¿[when] people get in there and start competing, then the business grows, and research happens because there’s a market to be driven to,” said Dutton. He offered as one example the Saxony area of Germany, which helped enable the first 300mm production in Dresden. “Government involvement has been more to facilitate and put in the right incentives to foster business and grow, and I think that’s what governments need to do.”

Scott Kramer, director of ISMI at Sematech [CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO], cited the semiconductor industry’s influence as one reason for government involvement. “It makes good sense for governments to be involved in some aspects of the [semiconductor] industry¿it’s so large now, it’s influential, it employs a lot of people¿so governments are stakeholders, along with private companies and universities,” said Kramer. “I think the important point from our standpoint in the IC industry is that there be a level playing field without artificial boundaries and let the technology innovation go as fast as it can.” Kramer also believes that universities will continue to play a key role in innovation. “University campuses are still the ideal place for breakthrough, nonlinear thinking, and we don’t see that changing,” he said. — D.V.

By Debra Vogler, Senior Editor

Furtive glances across a stuffy room, strident objections, consensus-building conducted in a corner, and plastic forks stabbing at salad in box lunches — these could be scenes from a union negotiation meeting, or perhaps midlevel managers debating the merits of a new product. It also might describe business as usual in a SEMI standards meeting.

In a former life as a reliability engineer, this author was involved in the world of consensus-building ad infinitum. Seeing my fellow comrades at a SEMI Standards reception at SEMICON West a few weeks ago was a reminder of the challenging work undertaken day in and day out by those who represent equipment and materials suppliers on SEMI standards committees. So I asked those still active in SEMI Standards, whether developing and negotiating standards had gotten any easier — or, perhaps, whether the process of creating standards has changed significantly, now that just about everything in the industry is played out against the backdrop of myriad partnerships, alliances, and consortia.

Those involved in updating and maintaining standards are “A slowly diminishing, small core group of interested parties,” observed Jim Irwin, principal at I/C Irwin Consulting. “Few leaders ‘out there’ seem to care very much about using the standards — still.” He noted that there is no driving force behind those using the equipment performance and productivity standards — the safety standard (S-2) has the horsepower of ESH law behind it, for example, but equipment performance and productivity standards do not. Irwin added that “what gets measured, gets done or improved,” underscoring the belief that if standards are to be effective, a driver needs to be found to measure their value. “SEMI marketing activities around standards, especially to users at the highest management levels, have been ineffective in the past.”

SEMI has heard the rallying cry for measuring standards efforts. According to Bettina Weiss, director of international standards at SEMI, the organization has been collecting data for several years — looking at everything from demographics per committee per region, to balloting, approval, and publication times, as well as sales and marketing. “With the exception of budget-related issues, this data has been shared with regional standards committees, technical committees, and special project groups within the program on a regular basis,” noted Weiss. “Internally, we have used this data to develop targeted marketing/messaging approaches for specific program aspects such as, recruitment/outreach, standards usage and acceptance, staff prioritization, and so on.”

Aside from its efforts to measure effectiveness, SEMI acknowledges that the process is open to abuses. “We have been trying to curb what a committee/task force deems to be not constructive behavior by strengthening communication channels among the [standards] author/task force leader/voting members who object to a document,” explained Weiss. For example, SEMI is actively addressing the use of what have been characterized as “philosophical negative votes” (i.e., “because I don’t like it”), and standards leaders are encouraged to resolve such conflicts before a standard is brought to a vote in the committee.

Among other changes SEMI is trying to enable within its standards program is deeper integration between SEMI committees — and the changes are being noticed. “A good example is that the E116 (Equipment Performance Tracking — EPT) committee, which was developed in the ICC [Information and Control Committee], is working closely with the Metrics Committee to ensure that E116 is aligned with E10 (RAM), E58 (ARAMS), and E79 (OEE),” noted Tom Pomorski, principal consulting engineer for Brooks Automation. “In fact, a joint E10/E79/E116 working group was formed to ensure that these standards ‘play nice together.'” The Metrics Committee Education and Adoption subcommittee also shares leadership with the ICC.

Pomorski also sees progress with respect to integrating the metrics standards with production systems, citing two ways in which this is occurring. “Performance and productivity monitoring provides near real-time feedback on production system variation allowing rapid response and control/correction,” he explained. “Historical performance/productivity data provides a foundation for factory continuous improvement programs such as TPM, Lean, and Six-Sigma.”

Irwin told WaferNews that he was surprised to see a beehive of activity about productivity at SEMICON West this year, as well as seeing The Goal [by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox] on the bookshelves of some fab managers he has visited in past years. “That suggests there is a certain place for productivity thinking,” he said. “Everyone understands the possibility when times are ‘rocking’ [in the industry]…but I’ve always gotten that deer-in-the-headlights look when I ask, ‘What’s the possibility for productivity thinking during flat or down times?'” He is hopeful that as people go from thinking about productivity to doing something organized about it, they will be begin to appreciate what the book and other resources have to say and offer in the way of services.

To facilitate discussions between device manufacturers and suppliers, and foster what Weiss characterizes as a better, data-driven and consensus-based assessment of what standards will be needed and when, SEMI established a Manufacturing Technology Forum (MTF) in May of this year. “The MTF seeks to start the dialog much earlier, with device makers and suppliers in lockstep and with a much clearer understanding of what will be needed to stay on target,” observed Weiss.

A harbinger of what standards experts have been seeking may be on the horizon. “From my perspective, we are witnessing a trend away from technical specifications and test methods for the industry, toward a more business-inspired approach where economic impact, cost assumptions, and productivity considerations now play a significant role when identifying an area where standards can help reduce cost,” she said. — D.V.

Among the questions explored in 14 video interviews conducted at SEMICON West are the following:

Hear what industry executives have to say about these and other issues.

Click the links below to see each video clip. If you are running a pop-up blocker, please hold the CTRL key when clicking, to allow the video segments to open.