Solar energy is clean, abundant, and renewable, but faces challenges mainly due to the high manufacturing and installation costs of photovoltaic modules. Finding novel fabrication techniques for solar energy conversion that could increase efficiency and lower manufacturing cost is a primary challenge in meeting the world's future energy needs in a renewable fashion. This project aims to conduct research on a scalable bottom-up nanofabrication platform that enables industrial-scale production of self-cleaning, broadband antireflection coatings on a large variety of photovoltaics-relevant substrates, such as single-crystalline and multicrystalline silicon, glass, GaAs, and GaSb. This platform combines the simplicity and cost benefits of bottom-up colloidal self-assembly with the scalability and compatibility of top-down microfabrication. The proposed activity is aimed at enabling less expensive and more efficient crystalline silicon solar cells.
The proposed activity, if successful, may lead to reduced manufacturing cost and increased conversion efficiency of crystalline silicon solar cells. Improving the conversion efficiency of solar cells facilitates to reduce the environmental impact and the consumption of oil, natural gas, and fossil fuels-generated electricity. Improved fundamental understanding of subwavelength-grating diffraction may also result from the proposed research. Besides renewable energy, the scalable bottom-up nanofabrication platform has the potential to advance many other areas that depend on the creation of large-area periodic nanostructures, ranging from all-optical integrated circuits to high-efficiency light emitting diodes.
This NSF I-Corps program provides funding for allowing the team consisting of an Entrepreneurial Lead (a graduate student), an I-Corps Teams Mentor, and the Principle Investigator (PI) to attend the intensive entrepreneur training course held at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The funding also enabled the team to conduct a thorough market survey on the commercialization potentials of the broadband antireflection technologies developed in the PI's labs for highly efficient crystalline silicon solar cells. The team has interviewed more than 70 potential customers of the antireflection technologies and has reached a "GO" decision after a technical pivot. To achieve the pivoted goal of fabricating broadband antireflection coatings on glass substrates, a new wet-processed colloidal self-assembly technology that enables industry-scale manufacturing of high-performance antireflection coatings on a large variety of substrates (e.g., glass and crystalline silicon wafers) have been developed. Besides its significant cost benefit, one major merit of the novel technology is its capability in fabricating broadband antireflection coatings on substrates with very complex geometries. This is difficult to be achieved by traditional vacuum-based antireflection deposition technologies. The team is now working with a few industrial partners in evaluating the commercial and manufacturing capabilities of the antireflection technologies developed in the PI's labs. These innovative antireflection technologies could significantly improve the conversion efficiency and reduce the manufacturing cost of solar cells. Additionally, broadband antireflection coatings can also be used in improving the extraction efficiency of both inorganic and organic light emitting diodes (LEDs). The multidisciplinary nature of this program, especially its entrepreneurship aspects, provided a rich intellectual training ground to the participants. The graduate student has been actively involved with customer interviews and given weekly presentations to the whole training group. This greatly helps the student in improving his communication skills. This grant has resulted in 2 peer-reviewed papers and 1 patent application.
