Cleaning and Etching Machine for Silicon Wafers
Wet-Chemical Processing Costs Reduced
The improved Silex wet-chemical batch cleaning and etching machine for silicon wafers utilises a new texturing process which is free of flammable volatile solvents such as isopropanol (IPA) and is based on commercially available additives.
Use of this new alkaline texturing process trebles etching solution lifetimes while also shortening etching times. Accordingly, production costs for mono-crystalline silicon solar cells are substantially reduced. The new generation machine has numerous advantages over traditional wet-chemical texturing systems: the absence of volatile, easily inflammable solvents simplifies both the design of the system and process control. The stable and reproducible processing results satisfy the stringent demands of the photovoltaics industry, and the applied processing chemicals simplify waste disposal of spent etching solutions. The new system achieves an output of up to 3 000 wafers per hour with low scrap rates of less than 0.05 percent.