Manufacturing flat panel displays involves precise layering of materials including glass, semiconductors, metals, and antireflective coatings, and subjecting them to many sophisticated etching, bonding and electrochemical processing steps. With governments, private industry, and consumers all seeking energy sources that are "greener" but still affordable, solar cell manufacturers are under pressure to increase the quality of their products and reduce costs. Yield is critical, and optical inspection is an important tool. Manufacturers are moving to 100% inspection of each panel after every major processing step.
Teledyne's high resolution and high speed linescan and TDI cameras find extensive use in solar panel manufacture. Microcrack inspection is crucial, because microcracks can eventually cause an entire panel to shatter, causing damage to other panels and equipment, and necessitating an expensive shutdown of the line for cleanup and repairs. Since microcracks are difficult to impossible to detect with visible light, some systems use near-infrared (NIR) backlighting to expose these defects. The high resolution (12k pixels), high speed, and NIR sensitivity of our Piranha HS NIR TDI camera allows inspection systems to reduce inspection time and boost throughput. Manufacturers also use our high resolution area scan cameras for long exposure inspection of microcracks using electroluminescence.
Downstream, Teledyne's extensive range of framegrabbers and vision processors harness torrents of data from almost any manufacturer's cameras. Teledyne's Xtium and Xcelera framegrabbers deliver leading-edge performance to accelerate inspection system decisions.