 |
| Large area thin film PV array at St Asaph, North Wales |
The main barrier to the mass market take up of solar power is the cost of solar cells. The SUPERGEN consortium Photovoltaic Materials for the 21st Century aims to make it possible for manufacturers to halve the cost of solar energy.
The consortium’s researchers are working on semiconductor-based cells that use materials like silicon, cadmium telluride and copper indium di-selenide. They aim to reduce the cost (£/Wp) of at least one class of solar cells by 50%, and research is focusing on the physics and chemistry that is most likely to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Efficiency improvements will come from light trapping and extending the amount of sunlight converted to electricity, and grain boundary engineering. Costs will be reduced by using ultra-thin structures, and in silicon processing by laser processing and high materials utilisation sputtering.
The consortium’s main research themes are:
- Light trapping - developing nano-patterned surfaces to couple light into thin absorbers more efficiently.
- Extending the absorbing power of silicon - coupling silicon with dyes that broaden amount of the solar spectrum that gets converted to useful power.
- Reducing the losses in solar cells - lessening the harmful effects of grains in thin films. This is being done by engineering the growth of larger grains and by electrically passivating the grain boundaries by chemical means.
- Making materials efficient device structures - developing novel patterned structures that collect and convert the light efficiently while using minimal materials.
- Improving process technology - improving upon industry standards for sputtering with a new high materials usage kit, and on laser processing by using copper vapour lasers to reduce the number of steps needed in manufacture.
 |
| Thin film sputtering plasma |
Who is Involved?
Consortium partners are the University of Bath, Durham University, Loughborough University, University of Northumbria at Newcastle, University of Southampton, University of Wales Bangor, Crystalox Ltd, Epichem Ltd, Gatan UK
Kurt J Lesker Company Ltd, MATS (UK) Ltd and Oxford Lasers Ltd. Industrial advisors are Dr Dieter Bonnet from Antec Solar GmbH and Dr Spencer Jannsen from JanTec Ltd.
More Information
Visit the PV-21 website or contact Professor Stuart Irvine at the University of Wales Bangor.