Twin Creeks Technologies, a specialist in next-generation manufacturing equipment for solar and semiconductor makers, announced Hyperion: a wafer production system that is said to dramatically reduce the cost of solar modules and semiconductor devices by reducing the amount of silicon and other substrate materials by up to 90 percent.
The key to Hyperion is thinness. Taking advantage of a technology called Proton Induced Exfoliation (PIE), Hyperion generates monocrystalline wafers that are less than 1/10th the thickness of conventional wafers. With thin wafers, manufacturers can profitably produce solar cells and other devices well below today’s best-in-class cost structure. Twin Creeks estimates that Hyperion will permit manufacturers to produce solar cells for under 40 cents a watt in commercial-scale volume production facilities with prices declining over time.