New Invention: Non – Toxic Silicon Solar Cell

Group of inventors from Malaysia have presented at the Innova Brussels Invention Fair 2013 theit invention: „ Non – Toxic Silicon Solar Cell”

 

Crystalline silicon solar cell technology forms the backbone of today’s photovoltatics. Despite resent substantial reductions in PV energy conversion costs, there are still higher than conventional energy resources. Therefore, in order to achieve cost parity in energy generation, PV manufacturing costs must continue to drop and be tailored towards inherently environmental – friendly processes. The inventor has developed an inexpensive and non-toxic solar cell manufacturing processes.

 

Presently, the commercial silicon solar cell manufacturing requires silicon nitride anti-reflection films that are deposited using expensive plasma equipments and toxic gases such as Silane and Ammonia. This is also the most expensive process in solar cell manufacturing.

The new process of producing solar cells very much uses nanoscale texturing processes to substantially reduce Si reflection. For such “black” surfaces , high index anti –reflections are not needed. Surface pasivation is achieved through growth of thin-oxid films as part of emitter formation to further simplify manufacturing process. Post-diffusion and surface passivation screen printing and contact firing are carried in IR conveyor belt furnace. The final step of edge isolation was based on XeF, plasma – less vapor etching. Solar cells were fabricated using commercially available 5”x5” square , p-type wafers with resistivity in 1-3 ohm-cm and thickness – 200 mm. The efficiencies were in 16-18% range.

 

This low cost manufacturing process for high quality solar panels uses non-toxic materials and is suitable for cottage industry. The quality of solar panel is comparable to any fully automated operation. The new process of making the solar cell has been copyrighted in PVCottage and the new process of making the solar panel has been trademarked as PVCottage.

 

EPO Patent Registration Services and Consulting GmbH has made direct contact with the inventors and has access to information about the invention directly from the inventors. In case of interest , the interested parties for the invention can contact EPO Patent Registration at the following Email address: Email: epo@epo-prs.de


Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 104857600 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 32 bytes) in /www/htdocs/w00e2ce7/includes/database/database.inc on line 2171