Japanese Inventor Develops Solar Cell Manufacturing Method

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 23 -- Sataro Yamaguchi of Aichi, Japan, has developed an ingot cutting method.

According to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Cutting method of ingot into wafers along cleavage plane. Onto surface of single crystal ingot is implanted ion beam to generate lattice defects in a direction defined by the crystal axes that corresponds to the cleavage plane. Cleavage is generated by applying a shock by a knife edge to the position of the lattice having a cutting face as a cleavage plane. Production time of waters is reduced with a more numbers of sliced wafers from one ingot."

The inventor was issued U.S. Patent No. 7,351,282 on April 1.

The patent has been assigned to Kabushiki Kaisha YYL, Tokyo.

The original application was filed on May 7, 2003, and is available at: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,351,282.PN.&OS=PN/7,351,282&RS=PN/7,351,282.

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