Ultralight Body weight, Slender Movie Solar Cells on Plastic – Prof. Steve Forrest – Technion lecture

Ultralight Body weight, Slender Movie Solar Cells on Plastic: Prospects for Organic and natural and Single Crystal Inorganic Semiconductor Photovoltaics
Prof. Stephen Forrest Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Physics University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Lecture at Technion. Seiden Fronteirs of Science and Engineering Forum on Micro-Nano Electronics and High Tech Printing on Jan. 28, 2014
Until just lately, minimal price photo voltaic cells have been the just about distinctive domain of Si or polycrystalline skinny movies of alloy semiconductors, this sort of as CIGS or CdTe. Just lately, however, these systems have been challenged by new techniques to substantial effectiveness, and minimal price and the ability to be deposited or mounted onto adaptable foils this sort of as plastic or steel. One this sort of engineering, organic photovoltaics, is in its infancy, nonetheless the development in effectiveness improvements has been remarkable, with effects of10% efficiency and lifetimes 10 a long time acquiring been documented. The strengths of making use of organics for photo voltaic cells are numerous, like the pretty minimal price, earth abundancy and non-toxicity of elements, minimal vitality deposition approaches, and their compatibility with staying deposited “by the mile” in a roll-to-roll production system. At the other end of the spectrum lie GaAs photo voltaic cells. Working with our system of non-damaging epitaxial liftoff, a high-priced father or mother wafer can be used to aid the advancement of lively photo voltaic cell epitaxial layers an indefinite selection of periods, transferring the epitaxy onto plastic foils for use in modules. Blended with their ability to accomplish pretty substantial efficiency the current file for GaAs photo voltaic cells is 28.eight%, and their intense adaptability when used in this lifted-off skinny movie kind, GaAs is unexpectedly rising as an essential competitor to the much more entrenched systems. In this chat, I will talk about the engineering problems, and consider the prospective buyers of both equally organic and GaAs photo voltaic cells as key sources of photo voltaic electrical power.