ARENA Project RND009 - Lowering the cost of high efficiency silicon solar panels
Project summary
This 3.5 year research project commenced in October 2014, and is support by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) through the Research and Development Programme.
The project brings together the world’s leading silicon materials and device characterization experts, from both academia and industry, to develop the next generation of characterization and materials technology for high efficiency silicon solar cells and modules. New technologies across the entire production chain - covering silicon ingots, wafers, cells and modules - are being developed to address key barriers to further improvements in the performance and cost of silicon photovoltaics. A common theme throughout the project is the development of advanced luminescence-based tools and techniques. Project outcomes will be commercialised through our industry partners, such as BT Imaging, a successful Australian PV metrology company with a global reach.
More details on the project can also be found at ARENA's project website.
Partners
The project is jointly led by Assoc Prof Daniel Macdonald at ANU and Assoc Prof Thorsten Trupke at UNSW. Our key project partners are:
BT Imaging - Australia
Sinton Instruments - USA
Apollon Solar - France
SunEdison - USA/Italy
Fraunhofer ISE - Germany
ISFH - Germany
The Univerisity of Warwick - UK
Project publications, presentations and reports
1. Hieu T. Nguyen, Di Yan, Fan Wang, Peiting Zheng, Young Han, and Daniel Macdonald, “Micro-photoluminescence spectroscopy on heavily doped layers of silicon solar cells”, Physica Status Solidi – Rapid Research Letters, Vol 9 (4), pp. 230-235 (2015) pdf.
2. Hieu T. Nguyen, Fiacre E. Rougieux, Fan Wang and Daniel Macdonald, “Micron-scale deep-level spectral photoluminescence from dislocations in multicrystalline silicon”, IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, Vol 5 (3), pp. 799-804 (2015) pdf.
3. Hieu T. Nguyen, Fiacre E. Rougieux, Fan Wang, and Daniel Macdonald, “Effects of solar cell processing steps on dislocation luminescence in multicrystalline silicon”, presented at the 5th International Conference on Silicon Photovoltaics, Konstanz, Germany, March 2015 pdf.
4. D Macdonald, F Rougieux, AY Liu, SY Lim, SP Phang, H Nguyen, Chang Sun and H Sio, “Defects and impurities in crystalline silicon solar cells”, invited oral presentation at the 8th International Conference on Materials for Advanced Technology, Singapore, June 2015 ppt.
5. Mohsen Goodarzi, Daniel Macdonald, Bernhard Mitchell, and R. A. Sinton, “Silicon ingot characterization by quasi-steady-state photoconductance”, 25th Workshop on Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells and Modules: Materials and Processes, Keystone CO, USA, July 2015 pdf.
