Six US Based Solar PV Equipment Manufacturers to Watch

By Chris de Morsella on December 10, 2009 1 Comment Advent Solar, Amerimade Technology, amorphous silicon, Applied Materials, automated wet bench, Bedford, CA, California, chemical vapor deposition reactor, cleaning, Coherent, crystalline silicon, dielectric ablation, dopant diffusion, edge isolation, etch-barrier ablation, etching, flexible PV, for thin-film patterning, GT Solar, IL, Illinois, Illinois Tool Works, ITW, laser, laser-assisted selective-emitter formation, lithographic screen printing, Livermore, MA, Massachusetts, Merrimack, multi-crystalline furnace, multi-crystalline ingot, multi-layer screen printing, New Hampshire, NH, photovoltaic inkjet, photovoltaic wafer fabrication machinery, piezoelectric impulse ink jet printhead, plating, polysilicon, polysilicon reactor, Santa Clara, semi-conductor manufacturing, silicon valley, solar cell, solar energy, solar equipment manufacturer, Solar Industry Award, solar module, solar panel, Spire Corporation, stripping, thin film silicon solar, Trident Solar, turnkey solar manufacturing line, wet chemical surface texturing

The manufacturers of the equipment and production lines that are needed to produce solar cells and modules are an important segment of the overall value chain in the solar PV sector as a whole. These companies are making a wide variety of equipment that finds use in the manufacture of solar cells, ranging from tradition semi-conductor manufacturing equipment that has grown out of the computer semi-conductor industry, to more exotic things like specialized inkjet printers and lasers. Who are these US based solar photovoltaic equipment manufacturers and how are they fairing in the global recession of 2009?