Originally established in 1992 by Ron Sinton as Sinton Consulting, Sinton Instruments is dedicated to developing and applying new tools and analysis to R&D and manufacturing in silicon solar cells and integrated circuits. Our goal is to enable the routine use of state-of-the-art device physics and measurements.
We develop solutions to practical problems in R&D and manufacturing process control by providing physically-rigorous, simple, and cost-effective measurement tools and analysis.
Over 600 of our minority-lifetime measurement instruments are in use around the world. Results from these instruments are frequently central to R&D and industrial publications and have come to provide the de-facto calibrated lifetime-measurement standard in laboratories worldwide.
Through university and industrial collaborations, we maintain and extend our practical experience in silicon device physics, test and measurement, silicon materials, and silicon device processing in order to bring the best possible instrumentation design and analysis software to each new application.
Recipient of the 2014 IEEE PVSC William R. Cherry Award
Before accepting the position of Manager of R&D at SunPower Corporation in 1989, Ron Sinton did his PhD work at Stanford University, developing 28%-efficient silicon concentrator cells and 23% efficient backside-contact one-sun cells.
Ron founded Sinton Instruments in 1992. He has focused the company on bringing the systematic device physics approach that was used to develop very high-efficiency silicon solar cells to the design of test and measurement instruments and analysis techniques for the wider variety of silicon solar cell technologies in all stages of R&D and production today.
He continues to publish technical papers and participates in paper reviews for numerous journals as well as conference program organization, especially the IEEE PVSC (1987-2008) and the annual NREL Silicon Workshop (1994-present).
