Spire Awarded DOE Grant for Solar Wafers and Cells

Spire Corporation has been awarded a grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) for developing a microcrack detection system meant for solar wafers and cells.

Spire Corporation is a global leader in providing capital equipment as well as turnkey manufacturing lines towards the production of photovoltaic cells and modules.

A major portion of PV cells comprise microcracks which are not easy to detect with presently available technology. These cracks could result in energy loss as well as cell breakage at the time of module assembly and during post installation. A contact-less photoluminescent technique is likely to be developed under this program for imaging microcracks. This technology is likely to be incorporated into the crack detection cell test system for module and cell assembly lines.