The Thin Film Autopilot

摘要

How feasible is to combine the coating design and manufacturing process in one holistic coating system? Can an automated coating system be created, able to design, monitor, redesign and continuously correct the formula/recipe in real time to always meet the intended specification and eliminate waste? Can such systems implement learning and reasoning features? We discuss our concept for Thin Film Autopilot, which deploys real-time optical monitoring of film properties, response surface modeling, intelligent data mining and dynamic process control. We share results from the automatic control of thin film solar panels and crystalline silicon solar cells.