Veeco Bags Multi-Million Dollar Order for CIGS Equipment

Veeco Instruments Inc has reportedly entered into a strategic partnership with Daiyang Metal Co., Ltd. of Korea to supply equipment to manufacture CIGS (copper, indium, gallium, selenium) solar cells.

 

Headquartered in Seoul, Korea, Daiyang manufactures cold rolled stainless steel which is used for construction materials, kitchen utensils, home appliances and the automobile industry.

 

Daiyang has awarded a multi-million dollar purchase order to Veeco to build a thin-film CIGS solar cell production line in Yesan, Korea which is expected to be shipped during the fourth quarter of 2009. A variety of tools supplied by Veeco includes one Mo (Molybdenum) deposition system, one TCO (Transparent Conductive Oxide) deposition system and two CIGS deposition systems.

 

Chan Ku Kang, Chief Executive Officer of Daiyang, said that Daiyang Metal has an aggressive multi-year, multi-site plan to become a leading worldwide manufacturer of CIGS solar cells. The company’s short term goal is to aggressively ramp to 200MW capacity during 2010 and 2011, which will entail the purchase of additional Veeco systems.

 

He added that, “Ultimately it is our goal to achieve one gigawatt of CIGS production capacity by 2013. We spent a lot of time researching and surveying the suppliers of CIGS manufacturing tools, and were very impressed with the level of process support and collaboration we received from Veeco during that period. We chose Veeco because they are best prepared to meet our manufacturing and technology needs today and in the future.”

 

Veeco’s FastFlex platform offers features such as flexible architecture with high uptime that can be configured to specific needs, with a choice of rotary or planar magnetrons for high throughput, high temperature effusion sources, and substrate sizes up to one meter wide.

 

Piero Sferlazzo, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Veeco’s Solar Equipment business, commented, “Daiyang’s selection of Veeco is confirmation of our leadership in thermal evaporation sources. Thermal source technology is quickly becoming the preferred CIGS deposition method because it provides customers with high volume, low cost manufacturing solutions that drive down the manufacturing cost per watt.”

 

Veeco serves HB-LED, solar, data storage, semiconductor, scientific research and industrial markets. Its manufacturing and engineering facilities are located in New York, New Jersey, California, Colorado, Arizona, Massachusetts and Minnesota.