news digest ♦ Solar


Intermolecular’s mission is to improve R&D efficiency in the semiconductor and clean-energy industries through collaborations that use its HPC platform, which allows R&D experimentation to be performed at speeds up to 100 times faster than traditional methods.


The firm has pioneered a proprietary approach to accelerate research and development, innovation, and time-to-market for the semiconductor and clean energy industries. The approach consists of its proprietary HPCTM platform, coupled with its multi- disciplinary team.


Through paid collaborative development programs (CDPs) with its customers, Intermolecular develops proprietary technology and intellectual property for its customers focused on advanced materials, processes, integration and device architectures.


QuantumClean acquires Advent Cleaning Technology


The provider of high-purity outsourced process tool parts, cleaning and surface treatment to the solar and LED industries has added quartz fabrication to its portfolio


QuantumClean, has acquired Advent Cleaning Technology, Inc. (Advent) semiconductor parts cleaning business located in Carrollton, Texas.


The acquisition of Advent enhances QuantumClean’s regional cleaning capabilities and adds quartz fabrication and repair to QuantumClean’s already extensive portfolio of semiconductor parts refurbishment services.


“We are pleased to acquire Advent Cleaning Technology, long-recognised in the industry for their strong customer orientation and quality focus. Advent is a perfect fit with QuantumClean’s strategy to continually increase its value to its semiconductor wafer fabrication, OEM and OPM customers through the offering of greater capabilities and convenience,” comments Scott Nicholas , CEO & President of Quantum Global Technologies, LLC.


“With the Advent acquisition, QuantumClean now operates fifteen Advanced Technology Cleaning Centers and three world class ChemTrace


170 www.compoundsemiconductor.net January/February 2013


microcontamination analytical laboratories in seven countries employing nearly 1,000 employees dedicated to providing the industry’s most technologically advanced high-purity semiconductor parts cleaning and analytical services,” Nicholas continues.


ChemTrace is a reference analytical testing laboratory primarily serving the semiconductor, solar and related industries by providing answers and solutions to its customers’ micro-contamination related issues. Founded in 1993, ChemTrace also provides independent analytical verification of process tool part cleaning effectiveness for many of QuantumClean’s semiconductor fab, OEM and OPM customers which have critical cleaning requirements.


III-V solar cell pushes efficiency boundaries


NREL researchers offer insights into the progress of record-breaking multi-junction cells


It takes out-of-the-box thinking to outsmart the solar spectrum and set a world record for solar cell efficiency.


The solar spectrum has boundaries and unalterable rules. And no matter how much solar cell manufacturers want to bend those rules, they can’t.


So how can we make a solar cell that has a higher efficiency than the rules allow?


That’s the question scientists in the III-V Multi- junction Photovoltaics Group at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) faced 15 years ago. They were searching for materials they could grow easily that also have the ideal combinations of band gaps for converting photons from the sun into electricity with unprecedented efficiency.


A band gap is an energy that characterises how a semiconductor material absorbs photons, and how efficiently a solar cell made from that material can extract the useful energy from those photons.


“The ideal band gaps for a solar cell are determined by the solar spectrum,” notes Daniel Friedman,


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