NYT - A Cheaper Route to Solar Cells

[Kevin]

As presented by the Times, this sounds like it could be a significant step in the progressive price reductions on classic photovoltaic cells:

A Cheaper Route to Solar Cells - New York Times, 2010.1019
http://www.ArchitectureWeek.com/blogs/link.php?id=75114

"A company that secured a Department of Energy grant to pursue a breakthrough idea in the manufacture of solar cells plans to announce on Tuesday that it has raised $20 million to commercialize its technique, which it says will reduce the price of solar panels by 40 percent.

"The company, 1366 Technologies of Lexington, Mass., has found a simpler way to produce the basic building block of solar cells: silicon wafers. It uses molten silicon to cast the wafers in their final form, six inches on one side and 200 microns thick, or about eight-thousandths of an inch.

"The current method is to cast the silicon in huge ingots or grow it in giant crystals and then saw off thin pieces, which wastes about half of the silicon. ..."

"The silicon, the basic material of solar cells and computer chips, is derived from a very cheap material, sand. But to function in electronics it must be made extremely pure, which makes it expensive.

"The new technique, going from molten silicon to final product, is a bit like frying pancakes as opposed to slicing salami, except, as Mr. Danielson put it, “when you cut a salami, it’s not like half the salami ends up as salami dust that you have to throw in the garbage.”

"The trick is to get the wafer out of the mold without breaking it. Company officials will not say just how they do that. The president of 1366 Technologies, Frank van Mierlo, predicted that the development would make solar power cheaper than coal power, although the technique has not yet been commercialized. ..."

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/ ... lar-cells/