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high-speed flex circuit printing industries with thin- film CIGS techniques in the mass production of individual CIGS solar cells.
The idea to reach outside of the solar industry to adapt useful technologies from other industries has begun to take a broader hold as evidenced by a recent U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) research grant that tasked the renewable energy industry “to identify and accelerate the development of cross- cutting and unique products or processes that are expected to have a disruptive impact on the photovoltaics (PV) industry.”
Of all the PV materials, CIGS exhibits the largest performance “gap” between CIGS laboratory efficiencies and average commercial module efficiencies, a gap of approximately 50% below laboratory efficiency.
Many experts believe the reason for the difference between laboratory and commercial efficiencies is normal compositional variation associated with scaling from laboratory processes that focus on smaller areas to large area commercial production. XsunX’s new approach aims to eliminate the variations while maintaining commercial production volumes.
IBIS also reported that “XsunX’s PV Cell technology in many ways can be thought of as a “drop-in” replacement for the current multi-crystalline silicon cell value stream, with the notable exception that it is much more capital efficient and cost effective. Moreover, XsunX’s CIGS PV cells have the potential to eventually “outstrip” the baseline mc-Si cell in terms of conversion efficiency.”
Based in Aliso Viejo California XsunX, is developing CIGSolar, a new hybrid manufacturing solution to produce high performance thin-film CIGS solar cells. The firm says these CIGS solar cells may soon offer a non-toxic, high-efficiency and lowest- cost alternative to the use of silicon solar cells currently used to manufacture nearly 80% of all solar modules world wide.
The firm claims its CIGSolar solution offers the potential to revolutionize the solar industry with the highest yield CIGS manufacturing technology available in the market today that combines robust state-of-the-art magnetic media manufacturing technologies derived from the hard disc (HD)
media industry with proprietary thin film solar manufacturing processes.
Intel Integrates Multi-Bragg Reflector With Silicon Chip
Intel demonstrated its transmitter chip comprised of four distributed Bragg reflector lasers integrated directly into silicon waveguides using novel wafer- bonding concepts pioneered at UCSB.
Intel presented groundbreaking research at the topical meeting of the Optical Society (OSA),Integrated Photonics Research, Silicon and Nano Photonics (IPR). IPR was held at the Monterey Plaza Hotel in Monterey, California, last week.
During a special keynote presentation Justin Rattner, Intel Chief Technology Officer and director of Intel Labs, demonstrated its 50Gbps Silicon Photonics Link prototype which is the world’s first silicon-based optical data connection with integrated lasers. The transmitter chip is comprised of four distributed Bragg reflector lasers integrated directly into silicon waveguides using the novel wafer-bonding concepts pioneered at UC Santa Barbara.
Each laser is independently modulated with a silicon-photonic Mach-Zehnder modulator at 12.5 Gbs and the four streams are combined with a monolithic wavelength multiplexer into a single fiber output. At the other end of the link, a monolithic wavelength demultiplexer on the receiver chip separates the four optical beams and directs them into integrated photodetectors, which convert data back into electrical signals.
The link is said to move data over longer distances than electrical solutions at speeds of up to 50 gigabits of data per second. A paper describing Intel’s research can be found vi the following link:
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract. cfm?URI=IPRSN-2010-PDIWI5
“This is an exciting example of the groundbreaking research being presented at OSA’s conferences, in particular at IPR,” said Tom Koch, IPR program Co-chair and OSA board member. “We are pleased that Intel chose IPR to make such a
August/September 2010
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