SBIR Phase I: A Radical New Alternative to Semiconductor Photodiodes

SBIR 第一阶段：半导体光电二极管的全新替代方案

• 批准号: 1647693
• 负责人: Elie Track
• 金额: $ 22.5万
• 依托单位: nVizix LLC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-12-15 至 2017-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1647693&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; Radical; New; Alternative

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project involves a disruptive change to the solar energy industry by potentially doubling the efficiency of the best available solar cells while, at the same time, significantly reducing their cost. Renewable energy sources are critical to energy independence and, importantly, to the long-term viability of human society which is faced with the inevitable depletion of hydrocarbon based energy sources, such as oil, gas, and coal.The proposed project leverages known technologies that are used in physics research, specifically in high energy physics accelerators, such as those found in Fermi National Accelerator Lab or at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The approach is based on using thermo-ionic emission from metals as the source of electric power, in contrast to existing technologies that only use photo-generated currents from more expensive semiconductors. This shift can provide not only higher efficiency, but also a shorter "return-on-energy" which is defined as the time it takes for the device to produce as much energy as was used in its production. The project goal is to demonstrate this new approach by producing a cell that can produce electricity with high efficiency and be measured and evaluated independently by a standards laboratory to validate its result. From this starting point, device optimization and further development will provide a new competing approach to energy independence.

小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力涉及到太阳能行业的颠覆性变化，可能会使现有最佳太阳能电池的效率翻一番，同时显著降低成本。可再生能源是能源独立的关键，更重要的是，对人类社会的长期生存至关重要，人类社会面临着石油、天然气和煤炭等基于碳氢化合物的能源不可避免的枯竭。拟议的项目利用了物理研究中使用的已知技术，特别是在高能物理加速器中，如费米国家加速器实验室或欧洲核子研究中心的大型强子对撞机中发现的技术。这种方法的基础是使用金属的热离子发射作为电能来源，而不是现有的技术，这些技术只使用更昂贵的半导体产生的光生电流。这种转变不仅可以提供更高的效率，还可以提供更短的“能量回报”，其定义是设备产生与其生产中使用的能量一样多的能量所需的时间。该项目的目标是通过生产一种能够高效发电的电池来演示这种新方法，并由标准实验室独立进行测量和评估，以验证其结果。从这个起点出发，设备优化和进一步开发将提供一种新的竞争方式，以实现能源独立。