Publications

Advanced compound semiconductor and silicon fabrication techniques for next-generation solar power systems

Nielson, Gregory N.; Okandan, Murat O.; Cruz-Campa, Jose L.; Gupta, Vipin P.; Resnick, Paul J.; Sanchez, Carlos A.; Paap, Scott M.; Kim, B.; Sweatt, W.C.; Lentine, Anthony L.; Cederberg, Jeffrey G.; Tauke-Pedretti, Anna; Jared, B.H.; Anderson, Benjamin J.; Biefeld, Robert M.; Nelson, J.S.

Microsystem technologies have the potential to significantly improve the performance, reduce the cost, and extend the capabilities of solar power systems. These benefits are possible due to a number of significant beneficial scaling effects within solar cells, modules, and systems that are manifested as the size of solar cells decrease to the sub-millimeter range. To exploit these benefits, we are using advanced fabrication techniques to create solar cells from a variety of compound semiconductors and silicon that have lateral dimensions of 250 - 1000 μm and are 1 - 20 μm thick. These fabrication techniques come out of relatively mature microsystem technologies such as integrated circuits (IC) and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) which provide added supply chain and scale-up benefits compared to even incumbent PV technologies. © The Electrochemical Society.