Solar Market Sunrise, Column Sunset

摘要

Readers of this magazine might have wondered what this column was doing in an electronics assembly journal. Certainly solar cell metallization and the latest photovoltaic technologies may have been perceived to be outside of the scope of traditional SMT processes. Put, when this column was conceived, there was a strong indication that many conventional EMS assembly firms might jump into the solar market. Indeed, there was opportunity and a knowledge base that made this move plausible. Of course, we now know that this hasn't happened as expected -partly because of the well-publicized solar market slowdown of the last two years, but also because the EMS manufacturing infrastructure in its current state wasn't necessarily conducive to solar manufacturing.