Innovalight Draws the Curtain (Just A Bit) On Its Cougar c-Si Cell Tech
By
Debra Vogler
October 2, 2009 | Post Your Comment New Hampshire, United States [Photovoltaics World magazine] Innovalight recently announced that both NREL and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems had certified that its silicon-ink processed solar cell, called the Cougar cell, has achieved an 18% conversion efficiency. The company's CTO and VP of Engineering, Homer Antoniadis, presented results at the IEEE San Francisco Bay Area Nanotechnology Council Chapter meeting earlier this month (9/15). Though not yet ready to publicly announce its data, Antoniadis says that higher efficiencies than those made public have been obtained in the lab. The company's core technology is a proprietary silicon ink and a process to fabricate high-efficiency crystalline silicon (c-Si) cells. While reluctant to make many details public, Antoniadis discussed some of the technology details with PV World: A standard cell process makes a uniform emitter; “By inserting only one additional step, using an industrial inkjet printer, we are able to enhance the overall efficiency of the solar cell." A pattern is introduced onto the surface of the incoming c-Si substrate using an ink printing/drying process coupled with a thermal process to enable activation. Higher n-type doping is achieved under the metal layers (high conductivity), and lighter doping is achieved everywhere else (lower conductivity). |
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