Magma Design Automation, a provider of chip design software recently announced a partnership with Orion Metrology, a manufacturer of inline process monitoring and control tools for photovoltaic (PV) solar cell manufacturers. This will integrate Magma’s YieldManager Solar with Orion Metrology inline inspection technology. This partnership will expand Magma’s capabilities to yield an analysis platform, enabling PV solar panel manufacturers to speed up defect identification and improve process control. The integration of YieldManager Solar with Orion Metrology inline inspection technology enables PV solar cell manufacturers to monitor random and parametric inline defects and instantaneously provide this information back to the manufacturing section to minimise the impact and severity of defects and improve yield and product efficiencies.  For its inline process and parametric measurement applications, Orion Metrology has adopted YieldManager as the central data analysis solution. The key to improving product efficiencies and manufacturing productivity is by identifying how carrier lifetimes are being affected by the process layer over a large area, from the surface to the bulk of the material, on 100 percent of the production throughput. The inline approach ensures a more accurate characterisation of process variation, and even small changes can yield dramatic improvements in product yield and efficiency, significantly increasing the value of the solar panels if monitored and corrected quickly. |
