Synova is committed to continuously advance and expand the capabilities and performance of its water jet-guided technology, Laser MicroJet®. In efforts to effectively broaden its research initiatives, Synova is entertaining strategic research and development (R&D) cooperations with leading universities, research institutions and technology players. Among others, Synova is involved in the following research collaborations:

The photovoltaic (PV) market is a hot, emerging technology space, which parallels that of the semiconductor industry prior to its commercial viability more than 40 years ago.  In efforts to enable the PV market, much in the same way, Synova announced its partnership with a research alliance led by the worldwide renowned, Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE)—Europe’s largest solar research institute—in February 2008.  The alliance comprises leading PV enablers spanning the manufacturing chain—from raw materials to finished cells—to investigate the use of Synova’s Laser MicroJet® (LMJ) for laser chemical processing (LCP).  This joint R&D project is set to take the LMJ beyond its usual ‘water-jet guided laser’ to become a ‘liquids guided laser’ to explore its viability for wafering and microstructuring applications.

Thus far, this new approach is expected to yield benefits that surpass those of conventional lasers, diamond blade saws and multi-wire slurry saws for a multitude of wafering and microstructuring techniques, such as grooving, cutting, slicing, doping, etching, edge isolation and via drilling.  Potential advantages the LCP is set to offer are: faster processing, reduced thermo-stress, improved fracture strength and an improved recycling rate, which ultimately impacts efficiency and cost—the two main factors set to enable worldwide adoption of solar cells.