This grant will develop new manufacturing approaches to the formation of critical materials and structures required for next generation solar cells. Current manufacturing technologies are based on batch processing of semiconductors, typically using slow epitaxial growth rates. This work will demonstrate that continuous processing can be a new approach to thin film epitaxial solar cell manufacturing that will enable rapid, high growth rate synthesis of epitaxial semiconductor materials. Tasks include the development of prototype manufacturing equipment, novel optimization approaches and product quality measurements. Existing material growth models will be extended to explore the rate- limiting steps and these models will be used to mitigate the development of point defects which affect the device performance.
The outcome of this research will be both the knowledge of the materials properties synthesized at high growth rates as well as approaches for improving their performance in solar applications. The rapid synthesis of semiconductor materials and the understanding of the impact of very high growth rate on materials properties provide fundamental information required to open new manufacturing regimes. The work of this grant will develop the design and optimization approaches for new classes of semiconductor manufacturing tools. The widespread development and expansion of several technologies, specifically solar photovoltaics and solid-state lighting, which are both key to the energy field, will benefit from the new approaches in tool design and process development as they move to a continuous, non-batch processing that can provide new economies and open new process design approaches which have been unexplored and unexploited.
