IEEE S.F. Bay Area Council e-GRID's
BayAreaTech

WEDNESDAY April 11, 2012
SCV Photovoltaics Chapter
Speaker: Siva Sivaram, PhD, CEO, Twin Creeks Technologies
Time: Networking and refreshments at 6:30 PM, Presentation at 7:00 PM
Cost: none
Place: Palo Alto Research Center (G.E. Pake Auditorium), 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto
RSVP: not required
Web: ewh.ieee.org/r6/scv/pv

Twin Creeks Technologies just unstealthed as an equipment vendor that enables solar module makers to significantly reduce the amount of silicon used — by allowing them to make extremely thin solar cells.  Twin Creeks uses an innovative ion-implant and cleave process to manufacture silicon photovoltaic cells that are 20 microns thick compares to the industry standard 150 to 200 microns.
Twin Creeks allows vendors to dispense with saws, furnaces, and cell finishing equipment from the likes of Applied Materials HCT and Meyer Burger as well as slurry and thick wafers.  Twin Creeks replaces that production chain with a beast of an ion implant machine
Twin Creek’s process is known as PIE, for Proton-Induced Exfoliation.  A hydrogen ion or proton is accelerated to 1.2 million electron-volts and shot into a crystal material — in this case, silicon — where it settles at a finite depth.  The hydrogen ions line up at that finite depth, where they are then heated, resulting in a wafer that cleaves right off the substrate along the crystalline plane.
The CEO will discuss the technology, the markets and the challenges of being a startup in the growing solar industry.