Oerlikon Solar

TEL Solar Ltd

Type	Business Unit of Tokyo Electron Ltd
Industry	Photovoltaics
Founded	2006
Headquarters	Truebbach, Switzerland
Key people	Kiyoshi Sato, President
Products	multi-junction thin-film silicon cells (Micromorph)
Number of employees	650+ (2012)
Website	www.solar.tel.com

TEL Solar, formerly Oerlikon Solar, is a manufacturer of production equipment for the manufacturing of thin-film silicon cells, headquartered in Trübbach, Switzerland, near the border to Liechtenstein. The Japanese electronics and semiconductor company Tokyo Electron acquired the company of about 650 employees from OC Oerlikon in November 2012.

TEL Solar owns the patent for the double junction thin film silicon technology from 1993. Micromorph is the brand name describing the amorphous/microcrystalline silicon tandem cell. The two junctions consist of the amorphous silicon (a-Si) top cell and the microcrystalline silicon (μc-Si) bottom cell. TEL Solar was the first to integrate boron doped zinc oxyde deposited by low pressure chemical vapour deposition (LPCVD) as the transparent conductive oxide layer, and the first to commercialize the high-efficiency Micromorph process. The majority of its customers upgraded from amorphous single junction to micromorph (double junction, or tandem cell) technology. The installed production capacity at its customer sites cumulates to one gigawatt. The company maintains sales and service centers in the USA, Europe, China, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore and Japan.

In January 2014, Tokyo Electron Ltd announced the closure of its micromorph technology development program it acquired from Oerlikon, while in July 2014, TEL Solar announced a new efficiency record for its micromorph module concept, with an independently certified solar conversion efficiency of 12.24%. TEL Solar's president, Kiyoshi Sato, noted: "Despite our decision to discontinue the solar business we are proud of the last result from our development team having achieved target and new world record."

TEL Solar is a provider of thin-film silicon PV module production equipment, end-to-end fabrication lines, process technology and services, for the automated mass-production of such modules.

TEL Solar is currently offering equipment that produce PV panels that are 1.4 square meters in size, have a module efficiency of 10.8%, and a module production cost of US$0.50/watt. in 2012, TEL Solar emphasized that it had doubled the annual output of its standard manufacturing line and reduced the expected cost of ownership by over 50% over the past three years. These improvements were seen to put TEL Solars customers in a position to offer panels at a price that enable solar energy to be sold at prices comparable to retail electricity rates in regions such as Southern Europe and California.