The in-line manufacturing process

“Our process is all in-line,” Weinstein said. “And it's dry and continuous. It is also fully automated. The facility runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”

The in-line process has advantages over crystalline silicon manufacturing, Weinstein said.

“Crystalline silicon manufacturing takes much longer, it usually happens in several different facilities, often in different countries,” she said. “You can imagine how much cost margin gets stacked there and how much ability there is to cut cost out. Since we do it all here in one facility, we don’t have to deal with that transportation; we don’t have to deal with margin stacking, and we control the whole process.”

The glass panes are moved from the initial washing station and transported across a series of smaller steps before they enter the long vacuum chamber. There’s a distinct sucking noise as the chamber decompresses.

“This part is where sort of the secret sauce happens, and is what makes us a unique solar panel manufacturer,” she said. “During the first half of the process is where our semiconductor material is deposited on the glass and from the halfway point-on out is what we call ‘module assembly and test.’

“The second half consists of essentially encapsulating the module, keeping it safe from any dust or scratches and adding a second piece of glass," said Weinstein.

But we aren’t allowed to see the second half.

“Any person past here has to wear personal protective gear, a bunny suit, full goggles and booties,” she said. “These are safety precautions for the employee.”

Indeed, through one of the windows, we see one person in the vacuum chamber room wearing a protective suit, including a heavy canvas like apron with metal grommets that looked like it belonged in a blacksmith’s shop.

The glass panes making their way through the chamber are being coated with Abound’s semiconducting components.

“That essentially is turning a solid-state chemical into a gas,” Weinstein said. “We use cadmium in our process, but it’s in a compound, so its CdTe [i.e., cadmium telluride]. It’s in a compound our vendors supply so it’s already stable. That compound is stable up to a 1,041 degrees Celsius.”

As a pre-mixed component, it’s safer to handle, Weinstein explained. Plus, the elements cadmium and tellurium are both byproducts of copper and zinc mining.

“So we’re able to sequester that from the environment, we encapsulate it and create a green energy product. In addition, we have a commitment to recycle every module at the end of the product’s life,” she said. A portion of each module’s sale price goes into an escrow fund and is kept safe for the life of the module, up to 40 years, she added.

At the other end of the vacuum chamber, we hear a pop. It’s the sound of the chamber re-pressurizing, she said. The panels are now coated with a black dusting of semiconducting material that is only a few atoms thick.

The panels are cooled, cleaned and checked for their voltage.

Story continues here.