Low-cost
solution processing method developed
for CIGS-based solar cells
The method
could provide an answer to a manufacturing issue
Though the solar industry today
predominately produces solar panels made from crystalline silicon,
they remain relatively expensive to make. New players in the
solar industry have instead been looking at panels that can
harvest energy with CIGS (copper-indium-gallium-selenide) or
CIGS-related materials. CIGS panels have a high efficiency potential,
may be cheaper to produce and would use less raw materials than
silicon solar panels. But unfortunately, manufacturing of CIGS
panels on a commercial scale has thus far proven to be difficult.
Recently researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering
and Applied Science have developed a low-cost solution processing
method for CIGS-based solar cells that could provide an answer
to the manufacturing issue. In a new study to be published in
the journal Thin Solid Films on July 7, Yang Yang, a professor
in the school's Department of Materials Science and Engineering,
and his research team show how they have developed a low-cost
solution processing method for their copper-indium-diselenide
solar cells which have the potential to be produced on a large
scale.
"This CIGS-based material can demonstrate very high efficiency,"
said William Hou, a graduate student on Yang's team and first
author of the study. "People have already demonstrated
efficiency levels of up to 20 percent, but the current processing
method is costly. Ultimately the cost of fabricating the product
makes it difficult to be competitive with current grid prices.
However, with the solution process that we recently developed,
we can inherently reach the same efficiency levels and bring
the cost of manufacturing down quite significantly."
The copper-indium-diselenide thin-film solar cell developed
by Yang's team achieved 7.5 percent efficiency in the published
study but has in a short amount of time already improved to
9.13 percent in the lab.
"We started this process 16 months ago from ground zero.
We spent three to four months getting the material to reach
1 percent and today it's around 9 percent. That is about an
average increase of 1 percent every two months," said Yang,
also a member of the California NanoSystems Institute, where
some of the work is being done.
Currently, most CIGS solar cells are produced using vacuum evaporation
techniques called co-evaporation, which can be costly and time-consuming.
The active elements — copper, indium, gallium and selenide
— are heated and deposited onto a surface in a vacuum.
Using vacuum processing to create CIGS films with uniform composition
on a large scale has also been challenging.
The copper-indium-diselenide material created by Yang's team
does not need to go through the vacuum evaporation process.
Their material is simply dissolved into a liquid, applied and
baked. To prepare the solution, Yang's team used hydrazine as
the solvent to dissolve copper sulfide and indium selenide in
order to form the constituents for the copper-indium-diselenide
material. In solar cells, the "absorber layer" (either
copper-indium-diselenide or CIGS) itself is the most critical
to performance and the most difficult to control. Their copper-indium-diselenide
layer, which is in solution form, can be easily painted or coated
evenly onto a surface and baked.
"In our method, material utilization is one advantage.
Another advantage is our solution technology has the potential
to be fabricated in a continuous roll-to-roll process. Both
are important breakthroughs in terms of cost," said Hou.
The team's goal is to reach an efficiency level of 15 to 20
percent. Yang predicts three to four years before commercialization.
"As we continue to work on enhancing the performance and
efficiency of the solar cells, we also look forward to opportunities
to collaborate with industry in order to develop this technology
further. We hope this technology will lead to a new green energy
company in the U.S., especially here in California so that it
may also bring job opportunities to many who need it,"
said Yang.
The study was funded in part by the NSF Integrative Graduate
Education and Research Traineeship-Materials Creation Training
Program.
###
Wileen Wong Kromhout
July 7, 2009
