DuPont Microcircuit Materials (DuPont) has added two new products to its leading lineup of frontside silver metallization pastes for crystalline silicon solar cells. DuPont Solamet PV18H and PV18J photovoltaic metallization pastes offer solar cell manufacturers improved efficiency and profitability.

"The DuPont Solamet PV18x series offers more efficiency with less material required, and we continue to innovate and build on the series," said Peter Brenner, global photovoltaic marketing manager, DuPont Microcircuit Materials.

"These two newest offerings demonstrate a range of superior technical properties to meet different customers' manufacturing process requirements. We are excited about rolling them out to our customers globally and seeing very positive results from customer early adoption."

The advanced Solamet PV18x series products deliver a step change in the power output of solar panels by improving the conversion efficiency of solar cells. This is due to proprietary Tellurium technology, which is only licensed and available from DuPont, and has been instrumental in unlocking efficiency gains by more than 0.5 percent by allowing contact to enhanced lightly doped emitters.

Compared to industry standard pastes on multi-crystalline solar cells, Solamet PV18H and PV18J can boost conversion efficiency by an additional 0.15 percent as well as enabling extremely fine line printability down to 35 microns.

In addition, up to 30 percent less material usage is required with these new materials, resulting in significant savings for manufacturers.

Solamet PV18H further enables excellent contact resistance to enhanced lightly doped emitters on mono-crystalline solar cells to maximize power output. Solamet PV18J demonstrates superior adhesion performance even with thinner busbars, and improves processing with excellent solderability and a wide solder temperature window.

Through continued investment in research, development and intellectual property, DuPont Solamet photovoltaic metallization paste technology has almost doubled solar cell efficiency over the past 12 years and continues to advance the industry.