Nippon Sheet Glass is intensifying its efforts to boost sales of glass substrates coated with tin oxide electrodes for use in solar cells.
The Tokyo-based company has been raising the output of these…
Nippon Sheet Glass is intensifying its efforts to boost sales of glass substrates coated with tin oxide electrodes for use in solar cells. The Tokyo-based company has been raising the output of these glass substrates at its plant in Chiba Prefecture since 2005 by using a float furnace equipped with online chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technology for coating the glass substrates with tin oxide electrodes. Annual output at the Chiba plant ranges from 300,000 sq m to 400,000 sq m; the company aims to achieve production of 1 million sq m by 2010. The move reflects the growing world demand for solar cells and a possible shortage of raw silicon, making the thin-film solar cells with their reduced silicon consumption a viable option. The online CVD technology uses the thermal energy of a float furnace to decompose various types of raw material gas and form thin layers on substrates. In the manufacture of thin-film solar cells, the technology is used to deposit a tin oxide electrode on glass substrates. Unlike conventional offline CVD technology, the online method is highly efficient in mass-production of electrode-coated glass substrates, as tin oxide is continuously deposited on a three-meter-wide mother glass substrate. Nippon Sheet Glass is the only company in Japan that applies online CVD technology to mass-production of these substrates. The substrates feature a thin layer of electrode, improved energy conversion efficiency and a lower cost per watt.