Researchers at the University of Illinois is a silicon wafer by “growing” layers of material, to develop lower cost GaAs thin film solar cells.
GaAs is a semiconductor compound, batetry can be used to produce solar cells, and energy conversion efficiency than the traditional silicon-based solar cells more potential.
Currently, researchers have made conversion efficiency of 25% to 30%. However, high manufacturing costs of the technology is still a great obstacle to commercialization.
The School of Materials Science Engineering and Department of Chemistry, professor JohnRogers, with another professor XiulingLi, is looking for lower cost technology to produce gallium arsenide thin film. At the same time, they also hope to find a common way to make films for the production of a variety of devices.
GaAs solar cell production is usually in a small piece of silicon on the deposition of the compound until the surface of a thin layer. The school’s researchers are changing the way the surface of the silicon layers deposited on GaAs. This structure, the GaAs and AlGaAs thin layer arranged alternately, looks like Americans eat the same school.
“Using this method, we can use a faster speed and less cost, to get more product.” Rogers professor said, “Although we produce only thin, but overall speaking, we produce much more material. ”
“If a 10-layer growth can be thin, it means get the 10 only a thin layer of silicon,” Electrical and Computer Engineering, Professor Li said. “If you use 10 times the growth response, then the reaction process of the installation and removal of silicon, and subsequent heating and cooling, need lots of time. If machines, materials preparation, time and personnel factors taken into account, our method can greatly reduce production costs. ”
The study group in the journal Nature published a paper to clarify the process can be used for three kinds of devices - light sensors, high-speed transistors and solar cells. They will also make this material compared with other materials.
The authors, two were the company’s scientists are Semprius. The company is located in North Carolina, is an emerging business goal is to use the technology in the study group to produce solar cells.
