Solar Cells Info

UPI Energy, May 23, 2007
Source: Semiconductor International
http://www.reed-electronics.com/semiconductor/articleXml/LN616914141.html

What was once garbage for Richardson, Texas-based Texas Instruments has now turned into a multimillion-dollar revenue source.  A new program for Texas Instrument’s silicon scraps are redefining the once worthless excess and are feeding solar industry’s growing appetite. The chipmaker historically had sold its scrap silicon wafers — the wafers that, for one reason or another, can’t be used to produce chips — at garage-sale-like events near its Richardson headquarters. A 55-gallon drum of old wafers might previously have gone to a local hobbyist for $100 or so, according to Mike Hayden, the silicon procurement engineering manager at Texas Instruments, Cnet News.com reported.

But as demand for processed, high-grade silicon substrates began to escalate in 2004, Texas Instruments re-examined its policies and started selling its scrap wafers to makers of solar energy gear.  Officials estimate the company sells about 1 million scrap wafers from its fabrication facilities in Texas, Germany and Japan to the solar industry, where they get converted into solar cells. Revenue from the program comes to around $8 million a year, Hayden said.

“The decision is to either throw them away or recycle them,” Hayden said. “One of the major priorities for us is to make everything as ecologically friendly as possible.”  Texas Instruments is set to expand its recycling program to include scrap silicon from its testing and packaging facilities in Taiwan and elsewhere. It is also looking at ways to extract and recycle silicon out of the water used in its manufacturing processes.