Instead of silicon, compound solar cells use two or more photo-absorption layers composed of different elements.  The trick is to find materials that generate the most current with the least waste.  Sharp’s innovation is a proprietary technology that enables it to produce a high-efficiency crystalline compound, InGaAs (indium-gallium-arsenide), which boosted the efficiency of Sharp’s previous cells from 31.5% to 35.8%.

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U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu was on to something when he suggested we start painting our roofs white to fight climate change.

We’ll soon be able to use a specialized paint to collect rooftop solar energy, too. Could this be the answer to neighborhood Christmas light wars?

The stuff is called silicon ink, and the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory says that solar cells using the technology have “demonstrated a record 18 percent conversion of efficiency,” according to cnet.com.

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This column highlights the top economic stories of the week.

While Detroit has benefited from Cash for Clunkers, foreign automakers have gained even more. Some critics of the program warned that because it let consumers buy domestic or foreign cars, Clunkers could end up spending more American tax dollars to help foreign companies than American ones. More on this story here.

With irresponsible banking practices taking the blame for bringing about the global economic crisis, there has been a surge of interest in Islamic finance.Now, a slew of academic courses are springing up to meet the demand of those wanting to break into an expanding market. According to ratings agency Moody’s, the global Islamic finance sector is worth $700 billion and has the potential to be worth $4 trillion. More on this story here.

n an effort to curb solid waste pollution, China banned the import of scrap polysilicon at the beginning of August, an effort supported by its current environmental laws according to its Environmental Protection Ministry. Scrap polysilicon is a low-grade form of silicon not pure enough to use in microchips. However, it can be used as a component of solar wafers, which contain a variety of types of silicon, including up to 30% scrap polysilicon. More on this story here.

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Solar venture investments hit a three-year low in the second quarter, the Cleantech Group said Wednesday. According to Brian Fan, senior director of research for the group, solar startups in North America, Europe, China and India raised a total of only $113.8 million for the quarter, which is down 7 percent from $365.7 million in the first quarter and down 86 percent from $834.7 million in the year-ago quarter.

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Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new treatment for silicon photovoltaic solar cells that creates bumps and peaks on the surface that increase cell efficiency in two ways.

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According to a new study conducted by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, The average installed costs for photovoltaic cells (in real 2007 dollars) went down from $10.50-per-watt in 1998, to $7.60-per-watt in 2007.

What’s most amazing about this report is that it appears to validate a whole slew of state and local solar initiatives. The researchers found that—despite the many, many reported advances to solar cell efficiency—most of the savings during this nine year period came from reductions to installation and external hardware costs.

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Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory released a study this week concluding that the solar industry could use many cheaper and more abundant alternatives to silicon, including iron pyrite — most commonly known as fool’s gold.

In total, the researchers found 23 alternative semiconductors, but only 12 are more easily found than silicon. Iron pyrite was named the most probable solution among those 12. Solar producers have often faced shortages of silicon, so even one new material would be a welcome jolt for the industry.

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Sun Well Solar—a subsidiary of the notoriously poor CD and DVD manufacturer, CMC Magnetics—has announced today that it is one month ahead of schedule in the ramp-up of its new photovoltaic production line.

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Some have argued that current technology is sufficient — that the ability to drive 1 1/2 hours to 3 hours nonstop is good enough for the overwhelming majority of trips, and that paired with a range extender, rapid chargers, or battery swapping, you have a viable means of replacing the gasoline car. However, there still is a great deal of pressure to get electric vehicle range up to that of gasoline.

Enter Yi Cui. Again.

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Solar PV manufacturer Oerlikon Solar has pioneered a new thin film solar technology process, which it claims has made its solar cells 7 per cent efficient - a 16 per cent energy improvement over its previous technology. The advance has led to a 50 per cent increase in the capacity of its thin film solar fabrication plant.

So, why is this important? Well, thin film cells are typically a lot cheaper to produce than more common silicon solar cells, but often suffer from significantly lower conversion efficiencies. Oerlikon’s breakthrough moves us a lot closer to the day when thin film becomes more cost-effective than silicon-based panels - which could mean a dramatic rise in the adoption of solar power in homes and businesses.

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Solar energy is necessary for our transition to a sustainable economy, but a recent study in Geophysical Research Letters suggests that the industry may be harming the environment. Nitrogen Triflouride (NF3), a greenhouse gas used by the semiconductor industry to clean the chambers where silicon chips are produced, has 17,000 times the globe-warming capacity of CO2. Now researchers believe that emissions of the gas are up to 4 times higher than previously thought—perhaps as high as 16 percent.

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The solar cells, about the size of a 12-point font letter ‘o,’ are being tested to eventually power microscopic machines, such as those used to test chemical leaks in the air.

The researchers at the University of South Florida say these are some of the smallest solar cells ever, with twenty aligning to form one panel at just one inch. Typical single cells are around two inches across on their own, and then form the large silicon panels we see on rooftops.

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Many new solar energy companies are working on silicon alternatives, but 1366 Technologies is taking a different approach— the MIT-founded company has invented both a new cell architecture for multi-crystalline solar cells and a manufacturing process to lower the cost of the cells. The process is so effective that 1366 believes it can make solar cost-competitive with coal by 2012. And with this week’s opening of the company’s solar manufacturing facility, that vision may actually come true.

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The material was discovered when a team of Harvard University scientists shone an ultra-powerful laser (briefly producing the same amount of energy as the sun falling on the entire surface of the Earth) on a silicon wafer, before adding sulphur hexafluoride. The result was a silicon wafer that looked black to the naked eye, but when examined under an electron microscope turned out to be covered with a massive amount of ultra-tiny spikes.

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Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University have developed a new type of silicon solar cell that is flexible enough to be used on a curved surface or fabric. Currently, most solar cells are rigid due to the use of plastic in their production.

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The iJET technique is so easy and cheap to carry out that it could revolutionize access to solar technology in the developing world.

In a recent radio interview (audio), Nicole Kuepper, a 23 year-old PhD student at the University of New South Wales, explained the process.

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This is good news for the solar industry, where cost has been a barrier to wider acceptance. Thus far, technology improvements have lowered solar PV costs only marginally, with each improvement coming at a large research cost. Fierce competition on the part of the largest tech companies could change that. According to Paul Davidson in USA TODAY:

“Since May, computer powerhouses Intel (INTC), IBM (IBM) and National Semiconductor (NSM) have barreled into solar energy, joining hundreds of fellow technology mainstays. Virtually every chipmaker is weighing a solar play, says Rhone Resch, head of the Solar Energy Industries Association. ‘We have a classic Silicon Valley land rush,’ says T.J. Rodgers, CEO of Cypress Semiconductor (CY), which owns 56% of SunPower. Drawing the stalwarts is solar’s 40% annual growth, says Gartner analyst Jim Hines.”

The savings will come largely in the area of automating manufacturing. How then, will the solar industry deal with the shortage of silicon? Semiconductor International rather mysteriously predicts that supplies of silicon will increase next year. Along with the shift to solar thin film technology, which uses little or no silicon, this may mean that mass-market adaptation is within reach.

Image Credit: Trend Labs Malware Blog

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]]> http://cleantechnica.com/2008/07/30/mass-market-solar-panels-could-result-from-chipmakers-competition/feed/ http://shirleysilukgregory.greenoptions.com/2007/10/31/building-the-solar-industry-wafer-by-wafer/ http://shirleysilukgregory.greenoptions.com/2007/10/31/building-the-solar-industry-wafer-by-wafer/#comments Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:14:17 +0000 Shirley Siluk Gregory http://shirleysilukgregory.greenoptions.com/2007/10/31/building-the-solar-industry-wafer-by-wafer/ The demand for solar energy is expanding rapidly, but one of the industry’s obstacles to even faster growth has always been the difficulty of getting enough silicon to make photovoltaic cells for solar panels.

This week, though, IBM announced a new potential source for much-needed silicon: waste silicon wafers used to make semiconductor chips for computers, mobile phones and other electronic devices. By erasing the layers of intellectual property that previously prevented those chips from being sold for other uses, IBM can now sell its scrap silicon wafers directly to companies that manufacture solar panels.

IBM and other companies in the industry use silicon wafers to imprint the patterns on semiconductor chips. Once scrapped, these product silicon wafers have typically been crushed and sent to landfills, or melted down for resale. That’s because the proprietary information encoded on the wafers has prevented them from being resold.

Using a process developed by engineer Eric White, though, IBM has found a way to erase the intellectual property from wafers so they can be reused or resold. IBM has introduced the process to turn old product wafers into monitor wafers to help manage the chip-manufacturing process. Wafers of either kind that reach the end of their lives can now be marketed to solar cell makers rather than being trashed.

IBM says up to 3.3 percent of the new silicon wafers made in the industry each day are currently scrapped. While that might not sound like much, when you consider that, worldwide, semiconductor manufacturers create 250,000 new wafers per day, the numbers start adding up. Using stats from the Semiconductor Industry Association, IBM estimates that could mean annual waste of up to three million silicon wafers — enough, according to IBM, to cover an area of 22.5 acres, or to provide solar power to 6,000 homes.

IBM says the new reclamation process helped it save more than a half-million dollars at its Burlingont, Vermont, facility last year; it expects to save nearly $1.5 million this year. It says it’s also getting ready to use the process at its plant in East Fishkill, New York, and will provide working details to others in the semiconductor-making industry.

ReneSola, one of China’s fastest-growing solar energy companies, has already begun to use the reclaimed silicon wafers to make its solar panels. And the IBM process recently won the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable’s "2007 Most Valuable Pollution Prevention Award."

Pretty big props for something that starts out so small.