In order to meet its ambitious throughput and volume target requirements, Nanosolar ended up developing process technology innovations for virtually every single process step involved in the production of printed thin-film solar cells. This includes many conventional process steps, generally deemed considered fully developed, that turned out inadequate given Nanosolar's high-throughput printing and roll-to-roll processing capabilities.
Nanosolar: Printing Solar Cells.
The above video shows a historic Nanosolar achievement [June 16, 2004]: the first time that someone managed to simply roll-print the semiconductor of a solar cell that can be as efficient and durable as conventional crystalline silicon cells. [The roll is running at first test speed; later that day already, it ran at 10 times the speed.]
