Ferro Electronic Materials, a leading supplier of materials for fabricating photovoltaic silicon solar cells for more than 25 years, will introduce two new rear silver conductor pastes at Intersolar North America, held in San Francisco, California, 12-14 July. The two new products reduce cost per Watt while maintaining the same adhesion, solderability, and field reliability as current commercial products, enabling solar energy to become a more cost-competitive energy generation alternative.
PS 2130 and PS 2131 rear silver pastes
Ferro's new pastes have pure silver metallurgy and enable fast printing at speeds of more than 200 millimeters per second. They are compatible with the Company's back surface aluminum pastes and can be co-fired in a wide processing window. Both provide robust soldering behavior with excellent adhesion to silicon wafers and have demonstrated field-proven module performance. PS 2130 and PS 2131 silver pastes are RoHS- and REACH-compliant and are free of lead, cadmium, and phthalates.
Two avenues of cost savings
PS 2130 and PS 2131 are designed for target fired thicknesses of 5-7 microns and 4-6 microns, respectively. Compared to Ferro's current lead-free thrifted silver conductor paste,
these new pastes offer a typical solar plant savings of up to $5 million per year. This is based on the current cost of silver and a plant manufacturing 500 megawatts of silicon solar cells annually.
"These new products lower the cost of ownership to make solar energy more cost-competitive by reducing both precious metal content and paste laydown," said Todd Williams, business manager for Ferro Electronic Materials. "PS 2130 and PS 2131 provide the same mechanical performance as previous pastes at significantly lower cost."