US-20260125788-A1 - PVD COATING SYSTEM WITH CONTINUOUS MULTI-LAYER CONVEYING MODE AND COATING PROCESS THEREOF

US20260125788A1US 20260125788 A1US20260125788 A1US 20260125788A1US-20260125788-A1

Abstract

A PVD coating system with continuous multi-layer conveying mode and a coating process thereof are provided. The system includes a loader, a vacuum feeding chamber, a heating chamber, a coating process chamber module, a vacuum discharge chamber and an unloader connected in sequence through gate valves. The vacuum feeding chamber, the heating chamber, and the vacuum discharge chamber are provided therein with a multi-layer carrier plate conveying mechanism. The coating process chamber module is provided therein with a single-layer carrier plate conveying mechanism or a multi-layer carrier plate conveying mechanism. When the coating process chamber module adopts single-layer conveying, a front end and a rear end of the coating process chamber module are respectively provided with a process feeding buffer chamber and a process discharge buffer chamber. The process feeding buffer chamber and the process discharge buffer chamber are both provided with a multi-layer carrier plate lifting mechanism.

Inventors

Yusheng Yang
Hongqing Shan
Liming LAI
Yijun Liu

Assignees

GOLD STONE (FUJIAN) ENERGY COMPANY LIMITED

Dates

Publication Date: 20260507
Application Date: 20250225
Priority Date: 20241106

Claims (16)

1 . A PVD coating system with continuous multi-layer conveying mode, comprising: a loader, a vacuum feeding chamber, a heating chamber, a coating process chamber module, a vacuum discharge chamber and an unloader connected in sequence through gate valves, wherein one or more vacuum feeding chambers and one or more vacuum discharge chambers are provided; the vacuum feeding chamber, the heating chamber, and the vacuum discharge chamber are provided therein with a multi-layer carrier plate conveying mechanism; the coating process chamber module is provided therein with a single-layer carrier plate conveying mechanism or a multi-layer carrier plate conveying mechanism; when the coating process chamber module is provided therein with the single-layer carrier plate conveying mechanism, a front end and a rear end of the coating process chamber module are respectively provided with a process feeding buffer chamber and a process discharge buffer chamber; and the process feeding buffer chamber and the process discharge buffer chamber are both provided with a multi-layer carrier plate lifting mechanism configured to convert between multi-layer carrier plate conveying and single-layer carrier plate conveying.
2 . The PVD coating system with continuous multi-layer conveying mode according to claim 1 , wherein the multi-layer carrier plate conveying mechanisms provided in the vacuum feeding chamber, the heating chamber, the vacuum discharge chamber are upper and lower two layer-carrier plate conveying mechanisms, the coating process chamber module is provided therein with the single-layer carrier plate conveying mechanism; and the multi-layer carrier plate lifting mechanisms in the process feeding buffer chamber and the process discharge buffer chamber are two-layer carrier plate lifting mechanisms.
3 . The PVD coating system with continuous multi-layer conveying mode according to claim 2 , wherein the heating chamber is provided therein with upper and lower heaters and a molecular pump configured to vacuumize the heating chamber to a vacuum degree in the coating process chamber module, wherein the upper and lower heaters are respectively provided at upper and lower sides of the two-layer carrier plate conveying mechanism in the heating chamber.
4 . The PVD coating system with continuous multi-layer conveying mode according to claim 3 , wherein one vacuum feeding chamber, which is a low vacuum feeding chamber, is provided, and is connected to the heating chamber through the gate valve, so as to form a low and high two-level vacuum, or two vacuum feeding chambers, which are the low vacuum feeding chamber and a medium vacuum feeding chamber connected through the gate valve, are provided, so as to form low, medium, and high three-level vacuum with the heating chamber; two vacuum discharge chambers, which are a high vacuum discharge chamber and a low vacuum discharge chamber connected through the gate valve, are provided; or three vacuum discharge chambers, which are a high vacuum discharge chamber, a medium vacuum discharge chamber and a low vacuum discharge chamber connected through the gate valves, are provided; and balance pipelines are provided between the low vacuum feeding chamber and the medium vacuum feeding chamber, and between the medium vacuum discharge chamber and the low vacuum discharge chamber.
5 . The PVD coating system with continuous multi-layer conveying mode according to claim 1 , wherein the coating process chamber module comprises several process chambers communicating with each other, the several process chambers are provided with one or more mixed coating devices of a magnetron sputtering device, an ion plating device and an evaporation coating device.
6 . The PVD coating system with continuous multi-layer conveying mode according to claim 5 , wherein an isolation chamber is provided between two adjacent coating process chambers of part or all of the coating process chambers.
7 . The PVD coating system with continuous multi-layer conveying mode according to claim 5 , wherein the process chambers are provided with one or more coating devices.
8 . The PVD coating system with continuous multi-layer conveying mode according to claim 1 , wherein one or more loaders and one or more unloaders are respectively provided to cooperate.
9 . The PVD coating system with continuous multi-layer conveying mode according to claim 1 , wherein the unloader and the loader are further provided therebetween with a return conveying mechanism configured to convey a vacant carrier plate back to the loader.
10 . A PVD coating process with continuous multi-layer conveying mode, using the PVD coating system with continuous multi-layer conveying mode according to claim 1 , comprising steps of: S1, loading: placing silicon wafers on all carrier plates by the loader, and stacking the carrier plates into multiple layers; S2, feeding: opening the gate valve leading to the vacuum feeding chamber, conveying multi-layer carrier plates on the loader simultaneously into the multi-layer carrier plate conveying mechanism in the vacuum feeding chamber, closing the gate valve, and starting to vacuumize the vacuum feeding chamber until reaching a vacuum degree in the heating chamber, wherein a vacuumizing process is one-level vacuumizing or multi-level vacuumizing; S3, heating: opening the gate valve leading to the heating chamber, conveying the multi-layer carrier plates in the vacuum feeding chamber simultaneously into the multi-layer carrier plate conveying mechanism in the heating chamber, closing the gate valve, starting to heat the carrier plates, and at the same time, vacuumizing at a higher level to a vacuum degree in the coating process chamber module; S4, coating: opening the gate valve leading to a coating chamber, conveying the multi-layer carrier plates in the heating chamber into the coating chamber, then closing the gate valve, wherein the coating chamber adopts single-layer carrier plate conveying or multi-layer carrier plate simultaneous conveying; when the coating chamber adopts the multi-layer carrier plate simultaneous conveying, the heated multi-layer carrier plates are simultaneously conveyed into the coating chamber for coating; when the coating chamber adopts the single-layer carrier plate conveying, the heated multi-layer carrier plates are firstly simultaneously conveyed into the process feeding buffer chamber, converted into single-layer by the lifting mechanism, and then conveyed continuously in sequence into the coating chamber for coating, and the coated single-layer carrier plate is conveyed into the process discharge buffer chamber and stacked by the lifting mechanism into a state of multi-layer; S5, discharging: opening the gate valve leading to the vacuum discharge chamber, conveying the coated multi-layer carrier plates in the coating chamber simultaneously to the vacuum discharge chamber, closing the gate valve, performing pressure relief until a vacuum degree being room pressure, and at the same time, cooling the carrier plates, wherein a pressure relief process is one-level pressure relief or multi-level pressure relief; and S6, unloading: opening the gate valve leading to the unloader, conveying the multi-layer carrier plates cooled in the vacuum discharge chamber into the unloader, closing the gate valve, and removing the silicon wafers by the unloader.
11 . The PVD coating process with continuous multi-layer conveying mode according to claim 10 , wherein the carrier plates are conveyed in the vacuum feeding chamber, the heating chamber, the process feeding buffer chamber, the process discharge buffer chamber, and the vacuum discharge chamber in a two-layer simultaneous conveying mode.
12 . The PVD coating process with continuous multi-layer conveying mode according to claim 11 , wherein the multi-level vacuumizing in the step S2 comprises two incremental levels, respectively being a low vacuum feeding stage and a medium vacuum feeding stage, correspondingly executed in the low vacuum feeding chamber and the medium vacuum feeding chamber; and the multi-level pressure relief in the step S5 is three-level decremental pressure relief, respectively being a high vacuum discharge stage, a medium vacuum discharge stage and a low vacuum discharge stage, correspondingly executed in the high vacuum discharge chamber, the medium vacuum discharge chamber and the low vacuum discharge chamber; or two-level decremental pressure relief, respectively being a high vacuum discharge stage and a low vacuum discharge stage, correspondingly executed in the high vacuum discharge chamber and the low vacuum discharge chamber.
13 . The PVD coating process with continuous multi-layer conveying mode according to claim 12 , wherein the pressure relief in the high vacuum discharge stage to the medium vacuum discharge stage or the low vacuum discharge stage is performed by introducing argon or other rare gases into the high vacuum discharge chamber; the pressure relief in the medium vacuum discharge stage to the low vacuum discharge stage is performed by opening the balance pipeline, communicating the medium vacuum discharge chamber with the low vacuum discharge chamber, and balancing vacuum degrees in the two chambers; and the pressure relief in the low vacuum discharge stage to the room pressure is performed by introducing air into the low vacuum discharge chamber or by a CDA vacuum breaking method.
14 . The PVD coating process with continuous multi-layer conveying mode according to claim 10 , wherein in step S4, the coating is performed by one or more of a mixture of magnetron sputtering coating, ion plating, and evaporation coating; and the coating chamber is formed by connecting a plurality of process chambers together, and each process chamber can be used for coating a front film layer or a back film layer.
15 . The PVD coating process with continuous multi-layer conveying mode according to claim 10 , wherein one or more loaders and one or more unloaders are respectively used in the loading in step S1 and the unloading in S6 to simultaneously load and unload.
16 . The PVD coating process with continuous multi-layer conveying mode according to claim 10 , further comprising a step S7, returning a vacant carrier plate: returning the vacant carrier plate from which the silicon wafer is removed to the loader.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS This application claims the benefit of priority of Chinese Patent Application No. 2024115698325, filed 6 Nov. 2024. The contents of the above application is all incorporated by reference as if fully set forth herein in its entirety. TECHNICAL FIELD The present disclosure relates to the field of coating devices, and particularly to a PVD coating system with continuous multi-layer conveying mode and a coating process thereof. BACKGROUND ART Currently, mass-produced photovoltaic PVD coating systems on the market generally adopt a continuous coating mode, and carrier plates also enter and exit a vacuum chamber for coating continuously in a single layer and a single piece. Bottlenecks of a production cycle of a photovoltaic PVD continuous coating line at present are carrier-plate transmission time required by the carrier plate entering and exiting the vacuum chamber, time for vacuumizing to a required vacuum degree after the carrier plate entering the vacuum chamber, and time for breaking vacuum in the chamber with a vacuum degree required by a condition for opening a chamber valve, when the carrier plate leaves the chamber and the chamber needs to break the vacuum, etc. If the number of silicon wafers entering and exiting the vacuum chamber in a single time is increased, throughput of a photovoltaic coating device can be improved to a great extent, thus reducing a production cost. In an existing photovoltaic PVD coating line system, during upgrading and updating of devices, one of the ways to improve the throughput is to continuously increase length and width dimensions of the chamber, and increase designed length and width overall dimensions of the carrier plate for placing the silicon wafer. After the overall dimensions of the chamber are increased, an area of a dust-free room occupied by the device is increased, the large chamber is easier to deform after the chamber is vacuumized, then the device cost is higher, thus the production cost evenly distributed on a single silicon wafer is higher, and a battery cell produced is uncompetitive. After the length and width overall dimensions of the carrier plate are designed to be large, the carrier plate is easy to deform and not rigid enough, and during transmission of the carrier plate, the silicon wafer on the carrier plate is easy to fall off and break; the deformation and insufficient rigidity of the carrier plate cause a region of the carrier plate where the silicon wafer is placed to droop, the silicon wafer in the carrier plate has a non-uniform film thickness during coating, success rates of placing and taking wafer at automatic loader and unloader ends are reduced, and effective operation time of the device is reduced, thus affecting an actual throughput of the device, and indirectly increasing the production cost of the silicon wafer. Therefore, it is a direction of research to improve the throughput of the device without increasing the length and width dimensions of the chamber and the length and width overall dimensions of the carrier plate. SUMMARY The present disclosure aims at providing a PVD coating system with continuous multi-layer conveying mode and a coating process thereof, where multi-layer carrier plates are conveyed simultaneously, thus increasing the number of carrier plates transported by the chamber in a single time, realizing an increase in the number of silicon wafers entering and exiting a vacuum chamber in a single time without increasing the length and width dimensions of the chamber and the length and width overall dimensions of the carrier plates, improving a throughput of a PVD coating device, and reducing a production cost. In order to achieve the above objective, the present disclosure uses the following technical solutions. The present disclosure discloses a PVD coating system with continuous multi-layer conveying mode, including: a loader, a vacuum feeding chamber, a heating chamber, a coating process chamber module, a vacuum discharge chamber and an unloader connected in sequence through gate valves, where one or more vacuum feeding chambers and one or more vacuum discharge chambers are provided; the vacuum feeding chamber, the heating chamber, and the vacuum discharge chamber are provided therein with a multi-layer carrier plate conveying mechanism; the coating process chamber module is provided therein with a single-layer carrier plate conveying mechanism or a multi-layer carrier plate conveying mechanism; when the coating process chamber module is provided therein with the single-layer carrier plate conveying mechanism, a front end and a rear end of the coating process chamber module are respectively provided with a process feeding buffer chamber and a process discharge buffer chamber; and the process feeding buffer chamber and the process discharge buffer chamber are both provided with a multi-layer carrier plate lifting mechanism configured to convert between multi-layer carrier pl