SolarSummary: February 4-10, 2003

by Kirsten Elder Companies in the news Bekaert/Energy Conversion devices BP Solar Global Solar Energy Photowatt Solar Century Emerging Technologies Researchers at Heriot-Watt University in the UK say they have achieved considerable success in developing solar cells on textile substrates. The researchers have been investigating the feasibility of depositing the layers that make up a typical solar cell onto woven and nonwoven textile substrates. The silicon is deposited from a gaseous compound using a variation of conventional thermal chemical vapour deposition (CVD), to produce nanocrystalline thin films. In contrast to other forms of silicon deposition, the temperature that the substrate needs to withstand is only 200 C, and perhaps even lower. Therefore, not only can textile fabrics made from glass fibre be considered as suitable substrates, but so too can more everyday fabrics such as polyester. (Technical Textiles International via CNN Money, 05/02/03) The University of California in Santa Barbara are developing methods of producing PV cells, without the need of expensive, pure silicon. Rather than relying on the multi-tasking abilities that only pure silicon can provide, the university teams device uses a separate method to absorb light (using dye molecules lying on a gold film) thus allowing for the […]

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