SHINE PV will develop alternative technological routes to PV production for Silicon Heterojunction and TOPCon solar cells, covering the three key steps in the back-end manufacturing: metallization, post-processing and interconnection. SHINE PV will demonstrate different flows and down-select the most promising ones in terms of cost of ownership and high volume manufacturing readiness. Advanced equipment at TRL7 with Industry 4.0 dedicated features, innovative materials and solutions will be developed. For the metallization, SHINE PV will introduce parallel dispensing and plating as High Volume Manufacturing (HVM) alternative processes to incumbent screen printing, with the objective of demonstrating the complete or partial replacement of Ag with Cu, a fundamental step to enable Tera-Watt scale production levels. Moreover, SHINE PV will increase the efficiency through cell post-processing by applying Light Soaking process in HVM and recover the cutting-induced losses by Edge Re-Passivation. For the module making step, the innovations in interconnection proposed are Twill and Shingling processes and HVM equipment. Both will leverage on the optimization of the metallization and post-processing steps and will demonstrate their potential in terms of superior electrical properties, aesthetics, reliability, and compatibility with premium module designs. The expectation of the project is to enable an increase of solar cell (or module) efficiency of 0.5% absolute versus the reference process with a simultaneous CoO reduction of 20%, due to reduced material costs and increased equipment productivity. SHINE PV project will demonstrate the integrated innovative processes and novel equipment both virtually and within physical pilots at industrial partners at TRL7. To our knowledge for all these technologies no production equipment is available for HVM worldwide, and we envision a great potential for a PV supply chain revamping in EU.

REACTION will push through the first worldwide 200mm Silicon Carbide (SiC) Pilot Line Facility for Power technology. This will enable the European industry to set the world reference of innovative and competitive solutions for critical societal challenges, like Energy saving and CO2 Reduction as well as Sustainable Environment through electric mobility and industrial power efficiency. Establishing the first 200mm SiC Pilot Line in the world and developing the most innovative and cost competitive technology, this project will address mass-market applications like smart energy and smart mobility, and industrial. It will allow to meet the more and more increasing demand of requirements in terms of quality and cost constraint for next decade generation’s power electronics. The Project strength is the complete Pilot Line value chain implementation, integrating and optimizing partnership in the fields of SiC equipment developers, SiC process technologists, RTOs, and end users partners till the final applications context. This will allow to develop a full 8” SiC line ecosystem enhancing the competitiveness of EU- Industries down to the value chain in a market context where other countries today, such as the USA or Japan, are just starting to play on 6” SiC market. Innovative SiC power device Performances improvements, together with cost and size reductions, are the most relevant challenges addressed in the project that are expected to lead to a new stronger European supply chain for very compact SiC converters, from 600V to 2.2kV range, ideal for the addressed applications; the ambition is therefore to play a primary role towards excellence in Europe by a first generations of 8” SiC profitable Smart Mobility and Smart Energy products and components, primary access to IPs for the relevant essential capabilities, competitiveness of manufacturing in Europe.

R3-POWERUP will push through the new generation of 300mm Pilot Line Facility for Smart Power technology in Europe. This will enable the European industry to set the world reference of innovative and competitive solutions for critical societal challenges, like Energy saving and CO2 Reduction (ref. to COP21 Agreement ), as well as Sustainable Environment through electric mobility and industrial power efficiency. ● Development and demonstration of a brand new 300mm advanced manufacturing facility addressing a multi-KET Pilot Line (i.e. Nanoelectronics, Nanotechnology, Advanced Manufacturing) ● Improvement in productivity and competitiveness of integrated IC solutions for smart power and power discrete technologies. The strategy of the project is the following: ● The Pilot Line will enable the realization of sub-100nm Smart Power processes, starting from the 90nm BCD10 process, taking profit from the advanced and peculiar equipments available only for 300mm wafer size. ● The availability of a 300mm full processing line will also exploit the portability to 300mm of the most critical and expensive process steps devoted to power discrete devices. ● The Pilot Line will build on Digital Factory and Industry 4.0 principles, enforcing a flexible, adaptive and reliable facility, in order to investigate also the synergy and economic feasibility of supporting both Smart Power and power discrete processes in the same manufacturing line. ● The application of such technologies will be a breakthrough enabler for Energy Efficiency and CO2 Reduction worldwide, in line with COP21’s global action plan. The Pilot Line is based on three main pillars: 1. Market driven continuous innovation on smart-power and power discrete; 2. Industrial policy focused on high quality and mass production’s cost optimization; 3. Set the ground for future wafer upgrade of “More than Moore” disruptive technologies (e.g. advanced MEMS manufacturing, now at 200mm)