Solar panel made with ion cannon is cheap enough to challenge fossil fuels

[kristopher]

Twin Creeks, a solar power startup that emerged from hiding today, has developed a way of creating photovoltaic cells that are half the price of today’s cheapest cells, and thus within reach of challenging the fossil fuel hegemony. The best bit: Twin Creeks’ photovoltaic cells are created using a hydrogen ion particle accelerator.

As it stands, almost every solar panel is made by slicing a 200-micrometer-thick (0.2mm) wafer from a block of crystalline silicon. You then add some electrodes, cover it in protective glass, and leave it in a sunny area to generate electricity through the photovoltaic effect (when photons hit the silicon, it excites the electrons and generates a charge). There are two problems with this approach: Much in the same way that sawdust is produced when you slice wood, almost half of the silicon block is wasted when it’s cut into 200-micrometer slices; and second, the panels would still function just as well if they were thinner than 200 micrometers, but silicon is brittle and prone to cracking if it’s too thin.



This is where Twin Creeks’ ion cannon, dubbed Hyperion, comes into play. If you look at the picture above, 3-millimeter-thick silicon wafers are placed around the outside edge of the big, spoked wheel. A particle accelerator bombards these wafers with hydrogen ions, and with exacting control of the voltage of the accelerator, the hydrogen ions accumulate precisely 20 micrometers from the surface of each wafer. A robotic arm then transports the wafers to a furnace where the ions expand into hydrogen gas, which cause the 20-micrometer-thick layer to shear off. A metal backing is applied to make it less fragile (and highly flexible, as you see on the right), and the remaining silicon wafer is taken back to the particle accelerator for another dose of ions. At a tenth of the thickness and with considerably less wastage, it’s easy to see how Twin Creeks can halve the cost of solar cells.

According to Technology Review, ion beams have been considered before, but particle accelerators were simply too expensive to be commercially viable. This is the flip side of Twin Creeks’ innovation: It had to make its own particle accelerator which is “10 times more powerful” (100mA at 1 MeV) than anything on the market today.

When all’s said and done, if you buy Twin Creeks’ equipment, it is promising a cost of around 40 cents per watt...

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/122231-solar-panels-made-with-ion-cannon-are-cheap-enough-to-challenge-fossil-fuels

[Ian David]

1. Be cheaper to make it with a Wave Motion Gun.

[TupperHappy]

7. But its great for blasting those pesky Star Destroyers (nt)

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. Technology Review

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/39887/?p1=A3

[font face=Times, Times New Roman, Serif][font size=5]Startup Aims to Cut the Cost of Solar Cells in Half[/font]
[font size=4]A new process uses a high-energy ion accelerator to make thin silicon solar cells.[/font]

Tuesday, March 13, 2012
By Kevin Bullis

[font size=3]Twin Creeks Technologies—a startup that has been operating in secret until today—has developed a way to make thin wafers of crystalline silicon that it says could cut the cost of making silicon solar cells in half. It has demonstrated the technology in a small, 25-megawatt-per-year solar-cell factory it built in Senatobia, Mississippi.

Siva Sivaram, the CEO of Twin Creeks, says the company's technology both reduces the amount of silicon needed and the cost of the manufacturing equipment. He claims the company can produce solar cells for about 40 cents per watt, which compares to roughly 80 cents for the cheapest solar cells now. Twin Creeks has raised $93 million in venture capital, plus loans from the state of Mississippi and other sources that it used to build its solar factory.

The conventional way to make the crystalline silicon wafers—which account for the bulk of solar cells—involves cutting blocks or cylinders of silicon into 200-micrometer-thick wafers, a process that turns about half of the silicon into waste. The industry uses 200-micrometer wafers because wafers much thinner than that are brittle and tend to break on the manufacturing line. But in theory, they could be as thin as 20 to 30 micrometers and still be just as efficient, or more efficient, at converting sunlight into electricity.

Twin Creeks' process makes 20-micrometer-thick wafers largely without waste. It involves applying a thin layer of metal that makes them durable enough to survive conventional solar-cell processing equipment. Sivaram says that by greatly reducing the use of wire saws and related equipment and making thinner wafers, Twin Creeks reduces the amount of silicon needed by 90 percent and also greatly reduces capital costs. He says the technology can be added to existing production lines. The company's primary plan is to sell manufacturing equipment, rather than produce solar cells. "I expect that by this time next year, we'll have a half a dozen to a dozen of these tools in the field," he says.

…[/font][/font]

[FogerRox]

3. Extremely interesting technology

and if this technology finds wide acceptance in the PV industry, the impact would be huge. KnR

[ProgressiveProfessor]

4. Posted yesterday in GD

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002419063

Looks to be yet another PR piece about a potentially good approach that is no where near the mass market. Lost track of how many of them I have seen this month alone.

I am a big believer in PV solar. However, the field is ripe with hucksters and PR releases taken being sold as major breakthroughs.

***IF*** this approach has merit, lets see if it gets it to the mass market and what the prices will be then. Until then its a PR release and nothing more.

[kristopher]

6. It chaps your ass whenever anything positive is posted about renewables...

Your greenwashing disclaimer doesn't fool anyone.


http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/sunshot/about.html

[ProgressiveProfessor]

9. More BS and false claims about those who dare to disagree with you, even slightly

And you do not even have the common courtesy to check for duplicate threads either

[kristopher]

14. You didn't "disagree" with me

You just go out of your way to pointlessly make negative comments about all renewables, all they while pretending you do it out of an obviously false concern.

[Lawlbringer]

5. After the Solyndra debacle

wouldn't it be a tought sell for the gov't to back a company like this?

[drm604]

8. Who said anything about the government backing this?

[Lawlbringer]

10. Wouldn't a startup like this need the Dep't of Energy? n/t

[ProgressiveProfessor]

12. Not at all, why would you think they would?

Permits *maybe*, but not financial backing

[kristopher]

13. Sounds like they are planning to market the ion cannon.

Twin Creeks Technologies—a startup that has been operating in secret until today—has developed a way to make thin wafers of crystalline silicon that it says could cut the cost of making silicon solar cells in half. It has demonstrated the technology in a small, 25-megawatt-per-year solar-cell factory it built in Senatobia, Mississippi.

Siva Sivaram, the CEO of Twin Creeks, says the company's technology both reduces the amount of silicon needed and the cost of the manufacturing equipment. He claims the company can produce solar cells for about 40 cents per watt, which compares to roughly 80 cents for the cheapest solar cells now. Twin Creeks has raised $93 million in venture capital, plus loans from the state of Mississippi and other sources that it used to build its solar factory.

...

When all’s said and done, if you buy Twin Creeks’ equipment, it is promising a cost of around 40 cents per watt...

[ProgressiveProfessor]

11. Or anyone else for that matter

This is about a start up that announced its process, which is somewhat different. Who knows if it will pan out or not. Lots of them out there and similar announcements are almost a daily occurrence. The hard part is separating the hucksters from those with some real promise, and even the experts get fooled in that process.

The Solyndra meltdown will clearly give the gov and venture capitalists a bit of pause in investing in some of the more nascent renewable companies, but if the numbers are right, the venture capitalist will put their money down, its what they do.

There is no way to know at this time if this one will pan out or not. The key is not to get euphoric about everything that comes along and instead watch what gets market acceptance and support.

[kristopher]

15. More detailed information from Renewable Energy World

Twin Creeks Unwraps New Tool, Process to Slash Silicon Solar PV Costs

..."We can make less than $0.40/W cells today," Sivaram says, with $0.20/W for silicon and just $0.20/W for processing. Today's rooftop solar PV panels take two years to pay back the power used to create them, he points out; "we can do it in 25 days."


Another benefit of this technology is that it doesn't drastically change how a cell/module manufacturer operates, notes Sam Jaffe, research manager, distributed energy strategies at IDC Energy Insights. "It's a hard sell to convince the major solar cell producers to replace entire manufacturing processes, start from scratch and do things differently," he said. "That's not how mature industries work. You have to come up with a drop-in improvement and innovate that way. That's what this technology has going for it." Sivaram acknowledges that some tools in tangential PV manufacturing steps (wet station, screen printing, PECVD, metallization) will need some minor modifications, such as temporary handlers to be automatically attached and removed, but "it's something the equipment companies know how to do and work with us to make it happen."

The company has stealthily refined two generations of its Hyperion technology, and now a third-gen Hyperion tool offers equivalent output of 6 MW of cells/modules per year (improved from 750 kW and 3 MW in the previous two versions), and the company expects to improve Hyperion's output to 10MW/year within the next 12 months. Two of these monsters — each is 350 sq. ft., the size of a New York City studio apartment — are on the company's factory floor in Mississippi, a 25-MW production line which Sivaram describes as a "living lab" where prospective customers can come kick the proverbial tires, define and run their own solar-cell processes and "see for themselves" how it works, then take the results back to their own factories. A 100MW solar PV line would need ten of these 10-MW tools, and a gigawatt-sized factory would have 100 of them. But even that level of investment would still end up cutting a solar manufacturer's capex in half, the company points out.

Twin Creeks claims to be "very far into conversations for signing MOUs" (essentially "gentleman's agreement" preliminary to a formal contract) with a number of top-10 solar cell producers both overseas and domestic. "We're not spending any time with non-top-10 customers," Sivaram indicated....