Flexible plastic backplanes and strips open the door for new applications for integrated photovoltaic products. However, so far, the photovoltaic conversion efficiency of the integrated production of photovoltaic products is only half of that of conventional crystalline silicon solar cells.
Recently Harry Atwater, a professor at the Department of Physics at California Institute of Technology, and his research team have developed a new way to make batteries that require little silicon.
The demand for new silicon materials for new technologies is only 1% to 2% of traditional technologies
"Our technology requires only 1/50 to 1/100 of the traditional process," says Harry Atwater. "This technology is based on a homogeneous array of pipeline-like silicon substrates based on light absorption. And there is not much difference between the collection of optoelectronics and traditional batteries."
The smiley silicon pipelines are stacked on the substrate and appear as a brush under the microscope. Since conventional batteries are based on expensive high-purity silicon materials, such designs still have high economic value.
What does this mean? Only one to two percent of the silicon material is needed to produce photovoltaic products with integrated performance. As the cost of traditional crystalline silicon cells accounts for more than two-thirds of the value of silicon, the technology's savings on materials show its enormous market potential.
Increased control over light scattering to increase conversion efficiency
Silicon is the basis of photoelectric conversion. You may think that using less silicon will affect the power conversion. Actually, as you might think, Atwater said that this technology also has good photoelectric conversion.
"The light enters the pipe-shaped material and part of it is absorbed directly, and the other part enters the tube from the pipeline port. After numerous reflections, most of it is absorbed by the pipeline. This enhances the absorption of the entire incident light," Atwater said. At the same time, it plays a very good role in the absorption of light, and it even has a 20 to 50-fold increase for a single wavelength."
More full of flexibility
Atwater and his colleagues have already prototyped a prototype of this idea. From the top down, this battery is very different from our common battery.
Our manufacturing process is to grow the pipeline on the substrate, and then peel it out to have a flexible backplane, this material has the same good optical and electrical properties as the silicon material, but has better mechanical toughness and strength.
This flexibility opens the door for new applications, which is what Atwater calls "integrated photovoltaic technology." For example, the battery can be built directly on the roof, eliminating installation costs.
The importance of flexible and thin plates is important. The important point is that the material can be bent. You can imagine that they can be mounted on top of any shape, such as the top of a car, the top of a ship, or any non-planar surface.
The Caltech professor said that he is optimistic about the commercialization of this technology because the technology is based on the improvement of traditional technologies and does not require a big move. He also said that this will help greatly reduce the cost of photovoltaic power generation.
The most favorable aspect of solar power is that sunlight can be received anywhere in the world, whether it is the thicker northern Europe, the sunny Central and North Africa, or Australia and South Asia. This is the fundamental reason why solar energy can reach the world.
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