Applied Materials buys solar equipment maker

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Applied Materials (Nasdaq: AMAT) announced that it acquired Treviso, Italy's Baccini, a solar equipment maker, for $334 million in cash.

Applied Materials, the world's largest chip equipment maker, said Baccini is a supplier of automated metallization and test systems for manufacturing crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells.

"This acquisition is a key step in our goal to become the leading equipment supplier to the solar industry,” said Mike Splinter, president and CEO of Applied Materials.

"With our broad portfolio of advanced solar cell manufacturing technologies, we plan to reduce the production costs for both crystalline silicon cell and thin film modules, while also decreasing the grams-per-watt usage of silicon material."

Splinter said he expects his company to help drive down the cost of solar electricity to be competitive with conventional electricity sources, accelerating the rate of adoption for commercial and residential applications.

Applied Materials said Baccini would be integrated into its Solar Business Group, which already has a portfolio of crystalline silicon production technologies including precision wafering, passivation layer deposition, automated wafer handling capabilities, and back-end-of-the-line processes such as metallization, laser-based isolation, test and sorting.