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Headquartered in Australia, BT Imaging has a world-class R&D centre with close ties to the University of New South Wales; a sales and marketing operation based in California; and distributors in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China and South East Asia.
BT Imaging Introduces Multi- functional Inspection and Analysis Platform
The firm says its LIS-P2 is the first multi-function inspection and analysis platform designed for the solar photovoltaic cell production line lab and can replace several tools with just one.
BT Imaging Pty Ltd (BTi), a leading supplier of luminescence-based inspection and quality control systems for the photovoltaic manufacturing industry, has introduced the LIS-P2 platform.
The firm claims this is the solar photovoltaic industry’s first multi-function inspection and analysis system designed for significantly speeding up failure analysis and sampling in production. Available in two configurations, the LIS-P2 platform has capabilities in a single tool that can replace the current operator-intensive practice of using four or more tools in the cell production line lab.
increased yield.
“The LIS-P2 platform is a direct response to our customers’ need to increase solar cell production yield,” stated Ian Maxwell, CEO of BT Imaging. “We look forward to working with our customers to help them rapidly and accurately identify and diagnose production line problems.”
Solar cell manufacturers currently use several lab tools in the cell line for failure analysis. These typically include electroluminescence (EL), series resistance (RS), lifetime sensors, etc. The use of the current tool set is very operator and time- intensive, and also has critical data limitations.
For example, the existing lifetime tool typically only provides an average lifetime number for the wafer and no spatial information is available, preventing operators from carrying out accurate diagnosis of process issues or sampling of process steps for quality.
The Series Resistance tool that is used today is very slow and destroys the cell during measurement. As the industry moves towards higher efficiency cells, high-resolution imaging based information is going to be essential to drive better decision making in production.
The LIS-P2 platform offers photoluminescence (PL), EL, RS, quasi steady state photo conductance (QSS-PC), and lifetime imaging capability in a single tool, eliminating the need for production cell line labs to maintain and operate several tools. Available in two easy-to-use configurations, the LIS-P2 provides the cell line with the required data substantially faster than current tools, with higher resolution, with no sample damage, and without the need to load the samples on several different tools.
The LIS-P2w can inspect samples at all process stages, including as-cut wafers; the LIS-P2x inspects samples post-diffusion and onwards to finished cells. As the industry moves towards higher efficiency solar cells, the imaging-based information provided by the LIS-P2 platform has the potential to enable faster and better decision making in solar cell production, resulting in cost savings and
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www.compoundsemiconductor.net October 2010
The LIS-P2x does PL and lifetime inspection of processed wafers post diffusion and onwards to finished cells. It also does EL and EL-based series resistance (eRS) on finished cells. Most cell line labs do not have the capability to take high resolution lifetime maps or PL images of in-process wafers.
The LIS-P2x enables this new capability, allowing users to quickly diagnose process issues and to sample process steps for quality. The primary applications for this tool are line commissioning,
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