Printing Solar Cells
Silicon electronics are made in a method similar to developing a photograph. You have a certain material (a silicon substrate) that you layer with a chemical that reacts to UV light. You shine something like an overhead projection onto the chip and the silicon you want to keep stays while the parts you want gone dissolve. The process is fantastic for our ever-shrinking phones and electronic devices, but the substrate has to be very pure (down to the atom) which is hard to do for something the size of a window. It’s also a time and money consuming process, 1 Hour Photo, this ain’t.
Circuit printing has been around for a while now, but hasn’t really been able to make any major traction outside of LCDs. It works more like a printing press than a darkroom. One company, NanoSolar, is using the process to make affordable solar cells. They’ve sold their first Mega-Watt to a German power plant a couple of days ago and are pretty sure this is the beginning of a new era in solar.
With backers like Serge and Larry, NanoSolar may be going places, but they’ve spent the last 5 years just getting it to work. NanoSolar uses a semiconductor called CIGS instead of silicon. CIGS stands for Copper Indium Gallium Selenide. It’s also a bit experimental, and NanoSolar is the first out the door for this kind of solar panel.
NanoSolar’s cells won Pop Sci’s “Innovation of the Year” award and you can see a glimpse of how it all works in their writeup.
Don’t expect solar prices to drop instantly, however. Remember that these are the same processes that flat panel TVs and monitors use. It was a number of years before the technological kinks were worked out and product yields were acceptable. NanoSolar’s CEO Martin Roscheisen is confident that in time they’ll be able to provide energy for less than $1/Watt. That’s a bold statement for an energy source that is struggling with massive up-front costs. Don’t forget to multiply that by the 25-year warranty which at a permanently sunny equator gives you 110 KWh for every dollar you spend.
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