China PV firm does solar cell production tests for Natcore tech
A leading Chinese PV manufacturer has performed production line tests for silicon solar cell technology developed by US firm Natcore. The unnamed Chinese firm, which Natcore Technology refers to as “one of the world’s largest PV manufacturers,” is the the first firm to process its black silicon wafers into working solar cells on a production line, rather than in a laboratory setting.
Scientists at Natcore used the US technology company’s proprietary process to give the wafers a black silicon etch. The wafers were then shipped to the photovoltaic manufacturer, based in China’s Hunan province.
Five batches of silicon wafers with a black silicon etch were supplied to the Chinese company for solar cell finishing and testing. The wafers were prepared by Natcore’s scientists at its R&D centre in Rochester, New York.
Natcore said two of the batches were used as controls to help interpret results. Of the three test batches, one had a diffusion using phosphorous oxychloride applied by Natcore; the remaining test batches were diffused by the Chinese company. In all cases, the Chinese team performed the final steps necessary to turn the wafers into solar cells and to test them, with positive results, Natcore said.
David Levy, Natcore’s director of research and technology, said: “We put these cells through the Chinese manufacturer’s process with essentially no modification to the process itself, except for the fact that certain steps were completely removed. And the removal of these steps projects to yield cost savings of as much as 23.5 per cent.
“We came out with an efficiency of 15.7 per cent on this first trial. The Chinese team said they were very impressed, as we were, with this result,” he said. “Conventional cells made in a similar industrial process do have efficiencies in the range of 17 to 19 per cent. But considering the results of this first attempt, the Chinese engineers feel that we could easily push our black cell efficiency into the high teens.”
Chuck Provini, Natcore’s president and CEO, said the development demonstrates a “huge step” towards commercialisation.“I can’t overstate the importance of this development. It demonstrates that our black silicon process is commercially viable in a real production line,” Provini said. “It also shows that our process could be integrated into a production line without fear of contamination by the chemicals that our process uses.
“This is a huge step toward commercialisation. It proves our earlier contention that our technology can easily be retrofitted into existing solar cell production lines and can just as easily be incorporated into a new line. Black silicon seems poised to become an important new approach for the industry.”
The completed cells are being returned to Natcore for further testing.
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