At the upcoming 24th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition
(21 - 25 September, Hamburg, Germany), IMEC
will present a host of new partners within its Silicon Solar Cell Industrial
Affiliation program (IIAP). Among these are MEMC Electronic Materials Inc.,
Leybold Optics Dresden GmbH, Roth & Rau AG and Mallinckrodt Baker B.V.
IMEC's recently launched IIAP is a multi-partner, private-public R&D program
set up to accelerate the development of crystalline silicon solar cells that
will lower production cost and cut the amount of silicon per watt in half.
The
initiative targets efficiencies of about 20 percent by exploring both wafer-based
bulk-silicon and epitaxial cells.
With this ambitious but realistic goal, IMEC brings together silicon solar
cell manufacturers, as well as equipment and material suppliers, based on a
strong partnership of sharing talent, risk and cost, intellectual property and
creating new opportunities for proprietary IP within the program.
"Communicating the abundant opportunities for proprietary IP in solar
cell development is of utmost importance," says Jef Poortmans, Program
Director Solar+ at IMEC. "Some companies may be hesitating to join partnership
programs, since they cannot differentiate in products based on technologies
such as CMOS. However, IMEC's new IIAP performs research on mono-crystalline
reference substrates. The partners will fine-tune the results on their own substrates."
An integral part of IMEC's solar cell program is installing a state-of-the-art
pilot line that will allow all IIAP partners to conduct advanced solar-cell
process development in a semi-industrial environment. This will enable an efficient
transfer of results directly to their production lines. IMEC's IIAP program
is supported by the regional Flemish Government with a grant of 8.7 million
euros for building the pilot line.
"Our IIAP program," Poortmans says, "sets out to create innovative
fabrication processes for new generations of silicon solar cells.
Manufacturers as well as material and equipment suppliers work with IMEC's
solar experts on advanced processes and test them on our pilot line."
In addition IMEC will demonstrate its latest research results on silicon solar
cells (Booth B4U/17). Also, IMEC presents its organic solar cell technology
based on spray coating as a deposition technique, for fully solution-processed
polymer solar cells and high-efficiency stacked solar cells.