HelioVolt hits 12.2% thin-film PV efficiency with 6 minute printing process

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http://www.semiconductor-today.com/news_items/2008/MAY/HELIOVOLT_140508.htm

HelioVolt Corp of Austin, TX, USA, which makes thin-film copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar cells and modules, said that its proprietary FASST reactive transfer printing process has produced uniform thin-film solar cells with a high conversion efficiency of 12.2% in a record-setting throughput of just 6 minutes (as confirmed by independent testing at Colorado State University). HelioVolt’s 12.2% efficiency came from a “champion cell” consisting of a CIGS thin-film layer applied to a glass substrate.

The results were reported by founder and CEO Dr BJ Stanbery during his keynote address ‘Entrepreneurship on the Road from Science to Sales’ at this week’s 33rd IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference in San Diego, CA, USA.

Thin-film technologies aim to lower the cost of photovoltaic (PV) products by reducing the amount of material required compared silicon solar cells. FASST reduces costs further by manufacturing CIGS thin-film products 10-100 times more rapidly than competing processes including co-evaporation and two-stage selenization, the firm claims.

“In the lab, CIGS is already achieving the highest efficiencies of any thin-film solar material,” says Stanbery. Cadmium telluride (CdTe) PV cells – such as those produced by First Solar (the world’s biggest thin-film PV maker) - have achieved a record efficiency of about 16.5% in the labs (and an average of 10.6% in production). But in March the US National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL) reported 19.9% efficiency for a CIGS solar cell. However, NREL uses a co-evaporation process (where active chemicals are immersed in a solution, which then gets removed), which can take 40-50 minutes, according to HelioVolt.

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[msongs]

1. solar on EVERY rooftop in the USA, free from the clutches of corporate power companies nt