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Joint Chapter Technical Meeting with ACerS
Wednesday February 11^th  2009

"String Ribbon Wafer Process Technology"

by
Minh Le, Evergreen Solar Corporation
Manager of Technical Staff

About the Speaker

Mr. Minh Le Manager of the Technical Staff, Evergreen Solar Minh Le is a manager of the technical staff at Evergreen Solar, responsible for the development of the Quad String Ribbon process, which represents the lowest cost multi-crystalline silicon wafer production technology in the world.  His team is currently working on deployment of hundreds of Quad crystal growth furnaces worldwide for 2009, with 160 MW worth of production capacity in Massachusetts.  Prior to Evergreen Solar, Minh was a Foundry Manager at Vitesse Semiconductor where his team developed the fastest room temperature integrated circuit in the world, a 150 GHz static frequency divider. Minh earned his SB and SM from MIT in Physics and EE.

Abstract

Demand for alternative renewable energy has increased significantly during the past several years, but still only represents a small piece of worldwide energy supply.  Photovoltaics in particular has seen dramatic increases in demand. Evergreen Solar based in Massachusetts at the forefront of the drive to grid parity.  Our approach is centered on the core technology of string ribbon which provides significant raw material utilization advantages over other forms of silicon wafer production.  By developing technologies that enable high volume production, Evergreen is able to now scale up string ribbon technology to over 240 MW of worldwide production in 2009. Technology issues relevant to volume manufacture of millions of silicon wafers per week will be discussed.