Technicians at Applied Materials test a laser scribe machine,
part of the company’s equipment line for making the world’s
largest solar panels. The lasers etch the outlines of solar
cells into a transparent conductive oxide that coats a glass
panel. In 2006, semiconductor-equipment giant Applied Materials
got into the solar-power market in a big way. At the company’s
headquarters in Santa Clara, CA, you can see just how big: a
ceiling-mounted crane lifts a piece of glass the size of a
garage door onto a table for testing. The glass sheet, covered
with a thin orange film of amorphous silicon, is destined to
become one of the world’s largest solar panels. Applied
Materials developed the equipment to produce these extremely
large photovoltaic panels in order to lower the price of solar
power–crucial if solar is to compete on price with fossil-fuel
electricity. The value of a solar installation comes down to the
cost of each watt of power it can produce over the lifetime of a
panel, and Applied Materials’ panels