SEMI North America PV Standards meetings are taking place at SEMI HQ in San Jose, California on November 9-10, during the NA Fall Standards meetings. View the agenda for detail on topics covered by each task force and committee meeting.

A highlight of the PV Standards meetings will include a presentation on PV module reliability by John Wohlgemuth of NREL. He will present during the PV Standards committee meeting on Wednesday, November 10.

The following activities took place last week at the SEMI Europe Fall PV Standards meetings, held at Solarwatt in Dresden Germany:

• Formation of PV Wafer Traceability Task Force (TF).The TF, led by István Győry from Innovation Engineering & Services GmbH, will focus on applicable wafer size and format of marking of wafer.
• Test Method for Contactless Excess-Charge-Carrier Recombination Lifetime Measurement In Silicon Wafers, Ingots, and Bricks Using An Eddy-Current Sensorwas approved
• SEMI International PV Analytical Test Methods Task Force (TF)will resume discussion on a new Test Method For Measuring Oxygen, Carbon, Boron and Phosphorus In Solar Silicon Wafers And Feedstock By Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry
• The TF will also report on the progress of document 4675A, Test Method for the Measurement of Elemental Impurity Concentrations in Silicon Feedstock by Bulk Digestion, Inductively-Coupled-Plasma Mass Spectrometry.
• And it will report a recently approved round robin to establish precision of Glow Discharge Mass Spectrometry instrument from participating laboratories for PV1-0709 Test Method For Measuring Trace Elements In Silicon Feedstock For Silicon Solar Cells By High-Mass Resolution Glow Discharge Mass Spectrometry.
• Similar efforts are being pursued to verify methods for PV9-1110 Test Method for Excess Charge Carrier Lifetime in PV Silicon Materials by Non-Contact Measurements of Photoconductivity Decay By Microwave Reflectanceand PV10-1110 Test Method for Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) Of Silicon

The PV Materials Task Force (TF) will discuss dimension for square and pseudo-square silicon wafers ranging from 100-210 mm in ballot document 4826A - New Standard: Specification for Silicon Wafers for Use as Photovoltaic Solar Cells

The PV Electrical & Optical Properties Measurements Task Force (TF), is expected to push forward approval of doc. 4921, Guide for Specifying BRDF Metrics to Monitor the Surface Roughness and Texture of PV Materials since there was no reject on the ballot. The TF will also bring up new business for measurement of Haze on TCO film and Mercury probe measurement of PV material.

In addition to 6 chemical standards recently published, the PV Gases and Liquid Chemicals Purity Task Force (TF) will discuss standards for silane, ammonia, phosphorus oxychloride, helium, nitric acid and hydrochloric acid.

The cell specification work group will discuss Doc. 5032 Guide for Specifying c-Si Terrestrial Solar Cells . The anticipated specification will be a template, using parameters common to most c-Si cell producers.

North America - November 9-10, SEMI HQ office, San Jose, CA

Japan - December 7, SEMI Japan office, Tokyo

Taiwan - January 12, 2011, ITRI in Hsinchu

Europe - March 20-22, 2011 PV Fab Managers Forum, Berlin, Germany

For information on SEMI PV Standards activities, please contact Kevin Nguyen, or visit www.pvgroup.org/standards.