Updates on IMEC’s solar cell progress

During the week of Intersolar NA, IMEC announced new partnerships with solar cell material and equipment suppliers (MEMC, Leybold Optics, Roth & Rau, Mallinckrodt Baker) as part of its wafer-based silicon photovoltaics industrial affiliation program (IIAP), which with a grant from the Flemish government will set up a solar-cell pilot line for process development in a “semi-industrial environment.”

Emmanuel Van Kerschaver, Group Leader, Solar Cell Technology Group at IMEC, shared with SST‘s Debra Vogler highlights of recent developments at the research center: a solar cell with copper-plated contacts that has an efficiency of 18.5%, another solar cell with 16.1% efficiency using only 20µm of Si; and a chloride-free solar cell texturing process.

Van Kerschaver noted that much other work is being done, and should be ready to discuss soon. (IMEC was to present roughly a dozen papers at Intersolar.)

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