Kingstone Semiconductor Joint Stock Company Ltd. was founded in Shanghai's Zhangjiang High-tech Park in April 2009 by a team of five world-renowned ion implanter experts led by John Chen. John Chen is an international renowned authority on ion implantation. The expert team has developed ion implanters with sales of more than 1000 machines worldwide.
Kingstone Semiconductor Joint Stock Company Ltd. focused on ion beam technology, R&D, manufacturing and sales development. Kingstone's ion implanters are primarily applied in PV, OLED, and semiconductor fields.
Kingstone Semiconductor Joint Stock Company Ltd. has built a talented and experienced research and engineering team around the initial founding group of distinguished experts with more than 35% of team members holding a master degree or higher. This research and engineering team covers many fields including physics, semiconductor technology, materials science, mechanical engineering, automation, software engineering, etc.
In 2015, Kingstone Semiconductor Joint Stock Company Ltd. met the listing requirements of the NEEQ board and was officially listed in 2016. In 2018 Kingstone joined Wanye Group (stock code 600641 on Shanghai Stock Exchange). With branches in Shanghai, Wuxi, and Hong Kong it can carry out a comprehensive strategy of long-term commitment to develop and manufacture world class ion implanters, specifically to develop semiconductor equipment with independent R&D, thus helping the transformation from Chinese manufacturing to Chinese innovation.
Ion Implant
Ion implantation, the process of doping a semiconductor and thereby changing the semiconductor properties, has been widely used in integrated circuit (IC) industry. The ion implanter, the tool that is responsible for the implantation process, is one of the most crucial pieces of equipment for advanced IC production with an annual market size of 1.5 billion dollars.
Ion implantation has advantages over conventional thermal diffusion: mono-element doping; single-sided, collimated doping; superior uniformity; tailored dopant profiles; and patterned doping. Thus, ion implantation not only forms high quality PN junctions that improve solar cell conversion efficiency but also significantly simplifies the fabrication processes of various high efficiency solar cells. In conventional P-mono cell processes, ion implantation eliminates the PSG removal and edge isolation steps. Masking steps can be removed in bi-facial cell processes. IBC cells can be realized with self-aligned doping, greatly reducing their manufacturing costs.
Given these merits, ion implantation is not only the most economical and reliable process for high efficiency solar cell manufacturing but also an environmentally friendly process in solar cell manufacturing due to the elimination of POCl3 or BBr3, PSG or BSG removal, as well as edge isolation steps that result severe pollution.
Despite its adva ntages, the application of implant technology in the photovoltaic industry has been limited due to the associated high IC implanter price, low throughput, and large footprint. Based on the requirements of state-of-art solar cell technology, Kingstone has designed a new ion implanter specifically tailored to the PV industry - IonSolar. On both the wafer handling and beamline modules, IonSolar™ introduced patented breakthroughs: a "curtain-like" ion beam that can implant multiple wafers simultaneously, and a wafer handling platform that allows continuous wafer implanting without waiting for wafer movements. This allows for higher throughput and lower cost of ownership (CoO) of ion implantation to be realized. IonSolar™ makes possible field retrofittable upgrades of existing solar cell production lines in order to achieve higher efficiency cell manufacturing.
IonSolar Features
• High productivity
production throughput of 1800 wafers / hour, matching the pacing of existing production lines
• Small footprint
22m2, fitting into space requirements of existing production lines
•Low CoO
40% reduction compared to similar systems, allowing for ROI in less one year
• Local manufacturing and service at a world-class standard
Kingstone was founded by a team of overseas experts who have many years of successful experience, developing several generations of sophisticated IC ion implanters. The team has devoted themselves to making world-class quality ion implanters in China.
