Solar Inks to Reduce Cost of Photovoltaics

US scientists are developing cutting-edge solar cell technology with the emphasis on reducing costs.  Rather than developing solar panels, this technology involves applying solar inks directly onto walls or roofs – a technique than could bring down the cost of corporate or domestic solar power by up to 90 per cent – and its the brainchild of a team of researchers at the Austin-based University of Texas.  The application of these inks would not be confined to solid structures – windows, too, could have semi-transparent coatings applied. 

Low-Cost Solar

Lead by Brian Korgel, the Texan researches have been working within the low-cost solar energy field since 2007.  Present conventional solar cell manufacturing technologies are associated with high cost but, according to Korgel, the price of photovoltaics (solar cells converting rays into electricity) needs to drop to optimise their market potential.

“The sun provides a nearly unlimited energy resource, but existing solar energy harvesting technologies are prohibitively expensive and cannot compete with fossil fuels”, he explained.

Printable Solar Cells

The solar ink is comprised of relatively cheap nanomaterials, which make the notion of widespread printable solar cell applications realistic.  “You’d have to paint the light-absorbing material and a few other layers as well,” Korgel said, adding: “This is one step in the direction towards paintable solar cells.”

A single human hair is thousands of times the width of these nanomaterials, which were selected for their ability to boost energy efficiency.   Korgel’s firm, Innovalight, has a heritage of producing inks that use silicon but for the solar inks, CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide) is being used in favour of silicon.  CIGS, explained Korgel, is both lower-cost and more environmentally friendly.

“CIGS has some potential advantages over silicon”, he stated. “It’s a direct band gap semiconductor, which means that you need much less material to make a solar cell, and that’s one of the biggest potential advantages.”

Solar Ink Technologies

To date, the team have established an efficiency level of one per cent: nine per cent below what would be needed to make solar ink technologies a viable commercial proposition. 
When ten per cent is reached, a market debut of 2012 is possible, Korgel said.

Among the organisations involved in the financial side of this new solar technology’s development are the US Air Force Research Laboratory and the National Science Foundation.

See also:

New Solar Cell Technologies