KIC's Casey Kazmierowicz, Chairman of the Board, will present a paper titled "Thermal Profiling of Silicon Solar Cells During the Metallization Process" at the 35th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialist Conference, scheduled to take place June 20-25, 2010 Waikiki, Hawaii.

San Diego — June 2010 — KIC, the leader of thermal process development and control products, and winner of multiple industry awards, announces that Casey Kazmierowicz, Chairman of the Board, will present a paper titled "Thermal Profiling of Silicon Solar Cells During the Metallization Process" at the upcoming 35th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialist Conference, scheduled to take place June 20-25, 2010 at the Hawaiian Convention Center in Waikiki, Hawaii.

Accurate and repeatable recording of the thermal profile during the metallization process is very important to produce silicon solar cells with the best physical and electrical properties. Traditional thermocouple and attachment procedures include a 0.02" sheath, spherical bead type K thermocouple cemented on the reference wafer, and spring loaded (weighted) on wafer.

In this paper, Casey will discuss a procedure using a thermal profiler and flattened TC junction thermocouples in a wafer fixture for accurate and repeatable measurements in an IR belt furnace.

When using the SunKIC Datalogger and e-Clipse TC attachment fixture, the TC junction design can identify the aluminum melting temperature and alloy eutectic freezing temperature. In addition, the actual production wafers can be profiled and the surface temperature is recorded at four locations.

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Based in San Diego, KIC pioneered the development of furnace profilers and process development tools. The company's next generation thermal process systems help solar cell manufacturers increase cell efficiency through an optimized wafer profile.

With the introduction of cutting edge tools, the company continues to stay on the leading edge of process optimization and real-time thermal management systems, and has won numerous industry awards.