Solar cell production at a high level

In collaboration with Asys Automatisierungssysteme GmbH, Fraunhofer ISE has developed a process for metallizing silicon solar cells. With the help of this process, it is possible to produce solar cells in a high-throughput facility in a fraction of the previous time. Which benefits the largest solar module manufacturers in particular. The coating is realized using rotary screen printing and flexographic printing processes.
The line, called Rock-Star, works one and a half times faster than other lines, with throughput equivalent to up to 8000 parts per hour. Parts for other areas such as power electronics, hydrogen technology and sensor technology can also be used. The cycle time here drops to just 0.6 seconds per solar cell, which is a huge improvement in time management compared to the previous 0.9 seconds in the flatbed screen printing process.

Function of the system

The line features a completely new high-throughput transport system. When components are made, they are transported on shuttles at high speed and accuracy past printing units made by Gallus Ferd Rüesch AG, a mechanical engineering company based in Switzerland, and coated in the process.
A rotary screen printing unit and a flexographic printing unit can be added. Some printing as well as coating processes, such as gravure printing, can also be integrated due to the design. In this way, the components can be conveyed at 600 mm/s and printed accurately. Due to the metallization of the solar cells, busbars and cell grids are attached to the solar cell by screen printing.

History of the Fraunhofer Institute

The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems belongs to the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. and is located in Freiburg im Breisgau. It was founded in 1981 by Adolf Goetzberger. In 1983, the development of the first fully electronic ISE inverter was already successful. In 1986, the first series product with a fluorescent collector for energy supply was created here, and in 1989, the first clean room laboratory for the development of solar cells was opened. Since 1998, selective solar absorber layers for thermal solar collectors have also been produced.
In general, the institute is dedicated to applied research and development in engineering and natural sciences in the field of solar technology and photovoltaics. There is an external site in Gelsenkirchen, which produces solar cells. The institute is the largest solar research institute in Europe with over 1100 employees, and the budget is approximately 83.5 million euros.

The Frauenhofer Institute extends to 66 sites with over 22,000 employees in Germany. The Rock-Star facility was founded by Dr. Florian Clement, who is the head of the Structuring and Production Technology and Metallization department at Fraunhofer ISE, and has been its director since its inception.

History of ASYS Automatisierungssysteme GmbH

ASYS Automatisierungssysteme GmbH was founded in 1992 as a mechanical engineering company in Dornstadt by Werner Kreibl and Klaus Mang. Among other things, it produces stencil and screen printers, which are used to coat printed circuit boards with solder paste and solar cells with metallization paste. The company also produces handling systems for electronics manufacturing and automation technology for the medical technology and pharmaceutical industries. The turnover of ASYS Automatisierungs- GmbH is approximately 151 million euros per year. The company employs approximately 1300 people and covers about 75 percent of the SMT production line.

Contribution to climate protection

With the solar cells, which can now be produced much faster, climate change can be reduced at least slightly. Renewable electricity is used here instead of relying on conventional, non-renewable energy sources such as oil or gas, whose use leads to more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than renewable electricity. Of course, accelerating the production of solar cells is only a small contribution to climate protection. However, if more and more people switch to solar cells, the effect would increase day by day. Thus, with enough participation, it could be enough to slow down or even stop man-made climate change.
Revolution in solar cell production: the Rock-Star plant
With its short production times and high production rate, the Rock-Star plant is an asset in solar cell production, accelerating the production of solar cells in Germany and worldwide. It makes a not inconsiderable contribution to sustainably stabilizing the climate with solar cells and other products and thus becomes a true asset for the world.

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What at first sounds like a new blockbuster movie is in fact a research region for aeronautics, space and geodesy in the Munich conurbation. The Space Valley is made up of various research institutions of the Technical University (TU) Munich and established aerospace companies and forms a unique environment for networking and cooperation.

Munich’s metropolitan region as an innovation hub

The Faculty of Aeronautics, Astronautics and Geodesy (LRG) of the entrepreneurial TU Munich was founded in spring 2018. Geodesy describes the “science of measuring and mapping the earth’s surface”. The university’s research locations span from Taufkirchen/Ottobrunn to Munich, Oberpfaffenhofen to Garching and form a future-oriented research triangle. Taufkirchen/Ottobrunn forms the headquarters of the new faculty. Garching is home to the TU Munich’s research campus, Oberpfaffenhofen to the research airport and Munich to the TU Munich’s main campus.

Vision of the Space Valley

By networking the research locations in Space Valley, know-how is to be bundled and the vision of a high-tech region realised. Bavaria’s Minister-President Markus Söder has also pledged his full support to the innovation location and sees the potential for Space Valley to become the primary space location in Europe.

Bavaria’s new Silicon Valley for aerospace research

Inspired by Silicon Valley in California, the name “Space Valley” is intended to indicate an innovation location with a high level of exchange between research and industry. The proximity to aerospace companies and major international corporations already based here was a decisive factor in the new TU faculty’s decision to locate here. In recent years, more and more tech start-ups have also settled in the Munich Metropolitan Region, creating a unique environment for innovation and cutting-edge research. With Space Valley, the region benefits from dynamic symbioses between research institutions and established companies with the aim of unleashing a new scientific and economic force. Through the cooperations, students can apply their knowledge directly in practice and a space for networking is created.

A new campus for the faculty in Ottobrunn

The Faculty of Aeronautics, Astronautics and Geodesy at TU Munich has been part of the newly founded School of Engineering and Design since October 2021 and is set to become the largest faculty in the field of aeronautics and astronautics in Europe. Michael Klimke has been appointed as managing director of the new faculty. Especially the research location Taufkirchen/Ottobrunn as the headquarters of the department is predicted to have high potential. In the first quarter of 2022, the faculty will move into a newly rented 14,000 sqm property in Ottobrunn. The Ludwig Bölkow Campus being built there will be developed in cooperation with companies and research institutions located in Ottobrunn and will include a start-up centre in addition to laboratories and test halls. In the long term, a university campus for up to 4,000 students and over 50 professors and hundreds more employees is to be created there. The property is owned by the real estate joint venture Accumulata Real Estate  Group and Pamera Real Estate Partners.

However, the new campus also brings infrastructure challenges to Ottobrunn. The large number of new students and employees will need housing space and increase traffic in the area.

Strategic synergies of science and business in Space Valley

In addition to strategic synergies with start-ups, the Faculty of Aeronautics, Astronautics and Geodesy is already working with Airbus, the University of the German Armed Forces, Munich Aerospace, the German Aerospace Centre, Industrieanlagen-Betriebsgesellschaft mbH and MTU Aero Engines AG, among others.

Alliances are also being created within Munich’s universities between the TU Munich, the Munich School of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MSRM) and the Munich Center for Technology in Society (MCTS) in the field of aerospace research.

Mission of the Space Valley

The Space Valley’s initial mission is not to research other planets, but to explore the Earth. In particular, the acquisition of knowledge about our climate is a core objective. In the long term, new technologies are to be developed in Bavaria’s Space Valley that will enrich life on Earth.

Research areas and current projects in Space Valley

The Space Valley focuses on research areas of earth observation, communication and satellite technology, remote sensing and research on unmanned aerial vehicles.

In recent years, the TU Munich has participated several times in Elon Musk’s “SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition” and won four times in a row. In the process, the TU Munich student team built a Hyperloop capsule prototype and set a speed record of 482 km/h in the process. Hyperloop describes a high-speed train that travels through a tube at almost the speed of sound in a partial vacuum and is considered the transport system of the future. With a Hyperloop infrastructure, one could travel from Munich to Berlin in 40 minutes. Now the Faculty of Aeronautics, Astronautics and Geodesy is starting its own Hyperloop research programme and plans to install a test tube at the Taufkirchen/Ottobrunn site.

Furthermore, students in the interdisciplinary MOVE-III project at the TU Munich are researching space debris and tiny meteorite particles to better understand our Earth environment. Another project is working on aeroelastic wings for aircraft to make flying more efficient and thus cheaper and more environmentally friendly in the future. A start-up in Space Valley is currently working on developing an early warning system with nanosatellites to be able to detect forest fires earlier from space.

The global space industry is worth a total of 400 billion dollars and will continue to grow and gain in importance in the coming decades. The Space Valley in Bavaria offers the opportunity to be at the forefront of this dynamic future market.

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Due to the ever-increasing digitalisation, technology and the economy are dependent on constant progress. One of the most important areas is computer performance. Strong computer performance enables better autonomous driving, mobile devices or progress in the field of artificial intelligence. The challenge in improvement is to place more and more transistors on small chips.

How the innovative technology works

There are currently 10 billion transistors on small microchips in smartphones. These already have a million times the computing power of the computer used to land on the moon in 1969. In the early 1970s, microchips of the same size contained about 2000 transistors. Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors in chips would double every two years. In the following decades, it turned out that he was right. This law became known as “Moore’s Law”. Nevertheless, steps that lead to improvement become more and more complicated after a certain time in exponential progressions.

Microchips have been manufactured for 40 years using optical lithography technology. Structures of electronic components are transferred from a mask to a wafer made of silicon. The process is repeated about 100 times while different masks are used. The result is a three-dimensional structure of conductors and transistors. A sharp image of small structures depends on small wavelengths and large aperture angles of the optics.

In recent years, this process has reached its limits due to the increasing demands of technology and business. EUV lithography offers new opportunities and could push these limits, which is particularly interesting for the largest electrical companies in Germany. Put simply, an EUV lithography system consists of three essential components: A radiation source with residue protection and a collector, a wafer with photoresist and an imaging optics and mask. The new process uses other ranges of wavelengths and focuses on strong ultraviolet light as a radiation source. Ultraviolet is very short wavelength. In addition, the orientation on sophisticated optics and mirror systems enables the reproduction of tiny structures. The collector acts as a collection optic so that the radiation can be harnessed for the exposure process. The radiation is then reflected towards the lithography system. An ASLM system exposes more than 170 wafers per hour. The lacquer is precisely structured by an optical mask on wafers. This enables the creation of the finest structures with seven nanometres. The following comparison provides an illustration: the conventional system worked with wavebands of light of 193 nanometres, whereas EUV lithography works in the range of 13.5 nanometres. EUV lithography produces microchips that contain ten billion transistors but are only the size of a fingernail.

The technology is not only future-oriented and space-saving, but also energy-efficient. Compared to the older technology with a wavelength of 193 nanometres, the new process requires 50 percent less energy. Efficiency in terms of space utilisation has been improved by 40 percent.

Areas of application and examples of EUV lithography

Continuous development in the field of computer performance can guarantee that ever smaller and faster circuits are produced. Sectors such as the economy in particular benefit from more efficient manufacturing processes.

In road traffic, unpredictable and dangerous situations can quickly arise. In the long term, autonomous driving offers one possibility for improving safety. Here it is important that the software is not only able to brake and steer automatically. Programmes must be able to assess situations independently in order to act with foresight and recognise potential dangers. This kind of autonomous driving is not yet standard in today’s road traffic. However, EUV techniques are a promising way to permanently realise and improve such projects. Important for automated driving are cameras and sensors that help to evaluate situations. The environment is recorded and analysed in detail. New information is compared with a stored database to calculate an appropriate response. Improved microchips are able to create ever larger databases and process the large amount of information quickly. This improves reaction speed and accuracy.

EUV lasers enable modern smartphones and all the special functions they contain. Mobile phones have become increasingly secure against theft with the introduction of facial recognition. Various special features of the face are transmitted from the front camera to the smartphone, such as the distance from one eye to the other. The built-in programme compares the received data with the stored information and unlocks the mobile phone if the owner could be successfully identified. The fact that chips have become more and more powerful in recent years has contributed to the significant improvement of facial recognition. Similar software programmes are used at airports, for example.

In various service sectors, voice assistants and chatbots are used to simplify work. These artificial intelligences are used in customer service, for example. Programmes are offered on websites and can answer questions from consumers. If the software cannot find a suitable answer in the database, real employees are needed. EUV technology enables improved chatbots and AIs. Through improvements, programmes are able to recognise and correctly interpret possible ambiguous words. Even misspelled words can be correctly recognised and matched. Increased computing power enables ever larger databases that the AI can draw on to achieve better results.

Awarded the German Future Prize

On 25 November 2020 in Berlin, the winners of the Deutscher Zukunftspreis 2020 were announced. In an official ceremony, the winners of the project “EUV Lithography – New Light for the Digital Age” were honoured by Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. The team of experts led by Dr Peter Kürz, Dr Michael Kösters and Dr Sergiy Yulin was awarded the prize in the fields of technology and innovation.

The German Future Prize, one of the most important scientific awards in Germany, has been awarded since 1997. The focus is on honouring products that are ready for application in the fields of technology, engineering and natural science. When awarding the prize, the jury also focuses on the social and economic potential of the innovative projects. Only three teams and their innovations are selected each year.

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