Nanosolar has successfully applied advanced Rapid Thermal Processing (RTP) technology to its process for creating highly efficient and durable CIGS solar cells. This eliminates a key process bottleneck found in many state-of-the-art process implementations and enables the use of low-cost substrates in ways that were not considered possible before.

In Rapid Thermal Processing, a layer is heated for a very brief period only in a highly controlled way. For instance, RTP techniques can flash-heat a layer for just several picoseconds and put energy just into the top several nanometers of a layer in a highly controlled way -- while leaving the rest of the layer unaffected.

RTP has a secondary benefit of reducing the energy payback time of our solar cells to less than two months (for the full panel). By comparison, a typical silicon solar panel has an energy payback time of around three years, and a typical vacuum-deposited thin-film cell has one of 1-2 years. The energy payback time is the time that a solar panel has to be used in order to generate the amount of energy that it required to be produced.