Solar market thrives on venture capital and new technologies

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://optics.org/cws/article/industry/32406

Jan 11, 2008

Solar market thrives on venture capital and new technologies

The solar market has been growing at an annual growth rate of between 40 and 50% since 1990 and is a $12 bn business today. OLE speaks to Steve Eglash about investment trends and emerging technologies.

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Today, for the first time, more silicon is being used in solar cells than in integrated circuits. Not on a dollar basis, since silicon wafers for integrated circuits are more expensive, but in tonnage terms, that is now true. And that situation will never be reversed. This has changed the complexion of the silicon raw material industry.

What are the active research areas for PV technologies?
One area is thin-film solar-cell technology. The idea is to move away from silicon substrates and use inexpensive substrates such as glass, or thin foils of aluminium, stainless steel, or even polymers. A few microns of PV material can be deposited as a thin-film directly on top. These thin-film technologies could potentially be much less expensive than wafer-based technologies, but the primary challenge is getting the conversion efficiencies up to competitive levels.

Another hot area is concentrator PVs (CPVs), which use multi-junction or triple-junction solar cells. These are the world's most efficient solar cells and are about twice as efficient as the best silicon cells, but they are relatively expensive. This has the potential to be the lowest cost technique for producing electricity, since most of what you need to use is relatively inexpensive material like glass, plastic and aluminium. CPVs might also be more scalable, making it easier to ramp up production.

The final area is third-generation technology. This is the most futuristic, using some novel materials and physics like organic semiconductors or dye-sensitized semiconductors where specific photoactive dyes are placed in the semiconductor.

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