S.C. New Energy Ships First Flexible Perovskite Line

• S.C New Energy ships first commercial line for flexible perovskite cells, uniting RPD, PVD and slit coating to scale low-temp thin films for lightweight, high-efficiency PVs.

Chinese solar equipment maker S.C New Energy said it delivered its first commercial, mass-production line for flexible perovskite solar cells, covering core processes such as cleaning, reactive plasma deposition (RPD), physical vapor deposition (PVD), and slit coating. The company said its in-house RPD enables low-temperature thin-film deposition, while the slit-coating system provides uniform layers on flexible substrates, and VCD vacuum-drying improves perovskite crystallization quality.

The delivery marks a step toward scaling flexible perovskite manufacturing, a field drawing investment for lightweight, high-efficiency photovoltaics. In August, S.C New Energy reported shipping an industrial-grade “breakthrough” piezoelectric inkjet printing platform for perovskite thin films.

How will S.C New Energy scale flexible perovskite PV with RPD and slit coating?

• Deploy roll-to-roll web handling that pairs RPD with slit coating so active layers, electrodes, and interlayers are deposited continuously on polymer foils at high meters-per-minute throughput.
  
• Use RPD’s low-temperature plasma environment to deposit charge transport layers and transparent conductors on heat-sensitive substrates, avoiding thermal shrinkage and enabling wider material choices than sputtering alone.
  
• Leverage slit (slot-die) coating for the perovskite and interfacial inks to achieve tight thickness control and cross-web uniformity, reducing non-uniform crystallization that limits scale yield.
  
• Integrate in-line VCD/vacuum drying after slit coating to tune solvent removal rates, promoting dense, large-grain perovskite films without high-temperature anneals.
• Combine RPD and PVD for stacked electrodes: RPD for low-damage seed/barrier layers; PVD for highly conductive caps, balancing conductivity, transparency, and flexibility.
  
• Modularize process heads (cleaning → RPD → slit coat → vacuum dry → PVD → encapsulation) to allow recipe swaps for different perovskite chemistries and customer formats without retooling the entire line.
  
• Implement in-situ metrology (ellipsometry, quartz crystal microbalance, optical web mapping) and closed-loop control to correct thickness drift and edge effects in real time.
  
• Utilize patterned deposition and synchronized web registration to minimize laser scribing steps, shortening the P1–P3 interconnect flow and boosting aperture ratio.
  
• Optimize solvent and additive systems for slit coating that are compatible with vacuum drying kinetics, reducing pinholes and coffee-ring defects at industrial web speeds.
  
• Engineer barrier stacks and flexible encapsulation in-line, using RPD to form dense inorganic layers for moisture and oxygen protection that withstand repeated bending.
  
• Adopt SPC/MES data frameworks to track defect origins across stations, enabling rapid yield learning curves from pilot to multi-GW capacity.
• Design for EHS and cost: closed-loop solvent capture for slit coating, high target utilization in PVD/RPD, and low-temperature energy budgets to cut OPEX.
  
• Validate reliability for bankability—rolling fatigue, damp heat, thermal cycling—on production-width webs to demonstrate durability for BIPV, mobility, and UAV markets.
  
• Use the inkjet printing platform for high-precision patterning or local compositional grading, then hand off to slit coating for bulk layer deposition to balance precision with speed.
  
• Co-develop flexible TCO stacks (e.g., low-temp ITO/AZO alternatives) via RPD to maintain conductivity after bending while keeping optical losses low.
  
• Scale via parallel web lanes and wider coat heads, with edge bead management and web tension control to keep uniformity at increasing widths.