Physics:Helianthos
On 8 September 2011 Nuon announced the pilot plant would be closed down since no investor for production expansion could be found. However, on 7 May 2012 Nuon announced that Helianthos has been sold to HyET Solar.
Process technology
The process uses a temporary substrate on which flexible thin-film solar cells are deposited. The use of the temporary substrate allows relatively high processing temperatures while using (semi-)continuous roll-to-roll (or reel-to-reel) production processes and cost-efficient, abundantly available materials.
The active layers of such solar cells comprise a transparent conductive oxide layer (TCO), an active absorbent layer (e.g. thin-film silicon), and a back contact layer (e.g. a reflective metal layer).
Process sequence
The key steps in the process sequence are:
- Deposit the TCO layer on a temporary metal substrate foil using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) at about 500 °C (932 °F) .
- Deposit the active absorber layer (e.g. thin film silicon layer) using plasma enhanced CVD
- Deposit the reflective back contact by means of physical vapor deposition
- Pattern for monolithic interconnection
- Laminate to a permanent carrier foil
- Remove the temporary substrate foil by means of wet etching
- Confectioning, contact application and encapsulation
Applications
Using this process, flexible photovoltaic (PV) laminates are fabricated that can substantially reduce the per-kilowatt hour costs of solar electricity. Further, the resulting photovoltaic laminates are lightweight, rugged and offer certain freedoms of design.
PV laminates have the potential to be used for a range of applications, including:
- Large area roofing and other large area applications to generate electricity
- Rural electrification
- Industrial applications
- Portable applications.
Sources
See also
- Solar cell
- Thin-film cells
- Nuon
References
- Challenges in the development of thin-film silicon PV by Bernd Stannowski
- presentation Advanced Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells[yes|permanent dead link|dead link}}]
- World Record for thin film solar cells of Nuon Helianthos
- IKEA gets current from the roof
- Nuon Press Statement about the closing down of the pilot plant
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