Technological developments
en years before plastic solar panels will be in nanoscale science to argue that the mod- The three year $A12 million VICOSC
mass produced, but Buriak adds that when est efficiency losses of unconventional solar solar cell project is 50% funded by the
it happens solar energy will be available to cell materials would be offset by the poten- Victorian Government through an Energy
everyone. She says the next generation of tial for scaling up while saving significantly Technology Innovation Strategy Sustain-
solar technology belongs to plastic. “Plastic on materials costs. able Energy Research and Development
solar cell material will be made cheaply and Finding an affordable electricity supply grant. VICOSC includes researchers
quickly and in massive quantities by ink is essential for meeting basic human needs, from the CSIRO Future Manufactur-
jet-like printers.” Kammen said, yet 30 percent of the world’s ing Flagship, University of Melbourne,
population remains without reliable or suf- Monash University, with industry partners
cheaper materials could be ficient electrical energy. Scientific forecasts Securency, BP Solar, Bluescope Steel and
key to low-cost solar cells predict that to meet the world’s energy Merck.
Unconventional solar cell materials that demands by 2050, global carbon emissions Mr Batchelor said the project was at
are as abundant but much less costly than would have to grow to levels of irreversible the halfway point and the progress being
silicon and other semiconductors in use consequences. made was extremely good with these print-
today could substantially reduce the cost The study by Kammen and colleagues ing trials occurring six months ahead of
of solar photovoltaics, according to a new Cyrus Wadia, a post-doctoral researcher at schedule.
study from the Energy and Resources LBNL, and A. Paul Alivisatos, interim di-
Group and the Department of Chemistry rector of LBNL and UC Berkeley professor spray-on material to lead to
at the University of California, Berkeley, of chemistry, is available online at http:// cheaper solar panels
and the Lawrence Berkeley National Labo- pubs.acs.org. A new spray-on material that could make
ratory (LBNL). solar panels cheaper is to be developed in a
These materials, some of which are csiro: Trials promise a new era joint research by The Australian National
highly abundant, could expand the po- of solar cells that are printed University (ANU) and Spark Solar Austra-
tential for solar cells to become a globally like money lia.
significant source of low-carbon energy, the Research from the Australian Common- As one of two new projects worth a
study authors said. wealth Scientific and Research Organiza- combined $1.85 million, the spray-on
The analysis, which appeared online tion (CSIRO)’s Future Manufacturing project will focus on a new way to treat the
Feb. 13 in Environmental Science & Flagship, as part of the Victorian Organic surface of a solar cell, the core component
Technology, examines the two most press- Solar Cell Consortium (VICOSC), aims to inside a solar panel that converts sunlight
ing challenges to large-scale deployment develop flexible, large area, cost-effective, to electricity. The project will be run with
of solar photovoltaics as the world moves reel-to-reel printable plastic solar cells. the Finnish materials company Braggone
toward a carbon neutral future: cost per Victorian Minister for Energy and Oy.
kilowatt hour and total resource abun- Resources, Peter Batchelor, announced the “[This project] will provide an oppor-
dance. The UC Berkeley study evaluated start of printing trials by Securency Inter- tunity for significant manufacturing cost
23 promising semiconducting materials national, a banknote printing company. reductions by replacing the conventional,
and discovered that 12 are abundant “The production of these film-like solar expensive manufacturing techniques that
enough to meet or exceed annual world- cells will be literally as easy as printing are currently employed industry-wide with
wide energy demand. Of those 12, nine money. These solar cells are cutting edge the spray-on films,” said Dr Keith McIn-
have a significant raw material cost reduc- technology and offer advantages over tosh from ANU, the chief investigator in
tion over traditional crystalline silicon, the traditional solar technology because of the the first project.
most widely used photovoltaic material in potential to mass produce the cells cheaply The second project will investigate
mass production today. and install them over large areas, such as methods to change the surface of a solar
The work provides a roadmap for rooftops.” cell to improve its efficiency. This project
research into novel solar cell types precisely The technology used for these cells is will be run in conjunction with German
when the U. S. Department of Energy and still in its infancy, but this project aims to solar company GP Solar and led by chief
other funders plan to expand their efforts speed-up the development of this technol- investigator Dr Klaus Weber from ANU.
to link new basic research to deployment ogy and take it from research to rooftops as “We aim to develop a range of industry-
efforts as part of a national effort to greatly quickly as possible. ready cell fabrication sequences that will
expand the use of clean energy, according The Minister for Innovation, Industry, offer significantly improved conversion
to Daniel Kammen, UC Berkeley profes- Science and Research, Senator Kim Carr efficiencies,” Dr Weber said.
sor of energy and resources and director said that this research “is at the forefront The projects are a further extension of
of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy of polymer technology, which has already solar research at ANU, which is recognised
Laboratory. brought to the world the banknotes used internationally as a leader in the research
The research team identified a large in Australia and 21 other countries.” and development of photovoltaics. Both
material extraction cost (cents/watt) gap To be able to manufacture flexible, projects are supported by the Australian
between leading thin film materials and a organic solar cells which are ‘printed’ on to Research Council under the Linkage
number of unconventional solar cell candi- polymer in much the same way as money is Projects scheme.
dates, including iron pyrite, copper sulfide made, quickly and cheaply, has enormous Both projects will start immediately
and copper oxide. They showed that iron potential. and run until the end of 2011.
pyrite is several orders of magnitude better CSIRO Executive Dr Steve Morton
than any alternative on important metrics said the technology for the solar cells was
of both cost and abundance. In the report, the result of work by CSIRO researchers
the team referenced some recent advances on advanced polymers.
www.globalsolartechnology.com Global Solar Technology – March/April 2009 – 23
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