News Article
New cleaning process claims to advances solar cell manufacturing technology
Mallinckrodt Baker, Inc. and the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) have announced a new processing step in crystalline solar cell manufacturing that they claim provides a two percent relative increase in solar cell efficiency.
Mallinckrodt Baker, Inc. and the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) have announced a new processing step in crystalline solar cell manufacturing that they claim provides a two percent relative increase in solar cell efficiency. Also claiming, cells manufactured using this new processing step generate more electricity, increasing their value for use in solar panels and arrays. "Governments throughout the world are placing greater emphasis on alternative energy sources such as photovoltaics. One of the challenges is developing and manufacturing solar cells that provide lower costs of energy," said Dr. Paul Wyers, manager of the solar energy department of ECN. "The development of our ECN-clean process with Mallinckrodt Baker is one step toward achieving this goal."Driven by global warming concerns and the desire to reduce dependence on increasingly scarce and volatile sources of oil and other fossil fuels, there is significant interest in utilising renewable energy sources as a means of meeting the rising electrical energy demands of modern industrial economies. One of the leading renewable energy candidates is solar energy, specifically electricity generated directly from sunlight by photovoltaic cells. Recent estimates published by SEMI project the global solar photovoltaic market at more than $7 billion today, growing to over $16 billion in 2012."The combination of the ECN-clean process and our Mallinckrodt Baker chemistry addresses solar cell manufacturers' goals of increasing energy output for solar cells," said Peter de Groot, managing director for Mallinckrodt Baker's European headquarters. Process engineers have demonstrated the ECN-clean process, utilising a wet bench cleaning step after standard glass removal with hydrofluoric acid. This additional step increases solar cell energy conversion efficiency from 15 percent to 15.3 percent in absolute terms and is equivalent to a two percent increase in relative terms. This increase provides a competitive advantage in a marketplace where even slight efficiency improvements enhance a solar cell's electrical energy output and augment its commercial value.
