Linde Nippon Sanso (LNS) is helping to promote solar power in Austria with a contract to supply the country’s first solar cell manufacturing plant. LNS has an exclusive contract to supply Blue Chip Energy GmbH in Guessing with all of the gases needed to make solar cells.

Linde Nippon Sanso is a joint venture of The Linde Group, the leading global gases and engineering group of companies, and the Japanese Taiyo Nippon Sanso Corp. LNS, headquartered in Pullach, Germany, near Munich, offers gases, turnkey supply systems and services for numerous applications in semiconductor, solar cell, and optical fibre production.

The Blue Chip plant, which will be fully operational in the second quarter of 2008, will manufacture 800,000 square meters of solar cells a year, enough to provide power to 16,000 households.

Under the long-term contract, Linde will provide Blue Chip with turnkey installation of the plant’s bulk and special gases supply systems and ongoing delivery of the gases essential to making the solar cells. These gases include large volumes of the inert nitrogen gas required in the manufacturing process, along with silane and ammonia, used to deposit the anti-reflective coating that give the cells their characteristic blue colour and traps light inside the cell for maximum energy conversion efficiency.

Blue Chip Energy will invest €50 million in the first phase of the plant. The plant, which will create some 140 new jobs, is sponsored by the Region of Burgenland, the Austrian government, and the EU. Some 25 percent of Blue Chip is held by the investment company I-Sol Ventures GmbH, and 75 percent by Sol Holding.

The Linde Group is the leading global gases and engineering group of companies with more than 50,000 employees working in around 70 countries worldwide.

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