SBIR Phase I: Refinement of the Floating Silicon Method to Produce Drop-In Silicon Wafers for High Efficiency Solar Cells

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是太阳能电池板制造成本降低25%，每年减少高达2.1千兆吨的二氧化碳排放。由于硅片是价值500亿美元的太阳能电池板行业中最昂贵的组件，我们的低成本硅片制造技术为降低全球太阳能电池板生产成本提供了最大的机会。这种成本降低推动了提高太阳能市场渗透率所需的引人注目的经济性。作为背景，太阳能市场在历史上每降低20%的成本就会翻一番。我们的单晶晶圆质量更高，因此可以使用现有的商业太阳能电池板生产线提高高达10%的有效效率。此外，由于现有的硅片生产工艺是非常能源和材料密集型的，因此占太阳能行业的80%。我们的直接和高效技术有可能将太阳能行业2026年的碳足迹减少50%以上。拟议项目开发我们生产商业尺寸硅片的工艺所需的系统，并向太阳能制造商（我们的客户）证明我们的硅片可以通过商业太阳能电池生产线进行加工。随着我们的工艺生产出连续的硅带，这项工作将开发一种切割系统，该系统可以激光切割具有商业太阳能电池加工所需边缘和尺寸的离散晶片。这包括开发激光切割配方、晶圆处理系统，以及与第三方验证边缘质量不会干扰电池处理。然后，我们的项目在商业太阳能电池加工的每个关键步骤（包括化学蚀刻和丝网印刷）中研究并优化我们的晶圆性能。成功证明我们的低成本晶圆可以“插入”到现有的细胞系中，提供与现有技术相当（或更好）的性能，将开启我们与行业合作伙伴合作的大门，将这一过程商业化。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is a 25% cost reduction in solar panel manufacturing and the elimination of up to 2.1 Gigatons of annual CO2 generation. As silicon wafers are the most expensive component in the $50BN solar panel industry, our low-cost wafer manufacturing technology presents the strongest opportunity to reduce global solar panel production costs. This cost reduction drives the compelling economics needed for increasing solar market penetration. As context, the solar market has historically doubled for every 20% cost reduction created by the industry. Our single crystal wafers are further significantly higher quality, and therefore can enable up to 10% higher effective efficiency using existing commercial solar panel manufacturing lines. Further, as the incumbent silicon wafer production process is extremely energy- and material-intensive and thus constitutes 80% of the solar industry?s carbon footprint, our direct and high efficiency technology has the potential to reduce the solar industry's 2026 carbon footprint by over 50%. The proposed project develops the systems needed for our process to produce silicon wafers with commercial dimensions and demonstrates to solar manufacturers (our customers) that our wafers can be processed by commercial solar cell lines. As our process produces a continuous ribbon of silicon, this work will develop a cutting system that laser cuts discrete wafers with the edges and dimensions needed for commercial solar cell processing. This involves developing the laser cutting recipes, the wafer handling systems, and verifying with a third party that the edge quality does not interfere with cell processing. Our project then investigates and optimizes our wafers' performance during each critical step of commercial solar cell processing, including chemical etching and screen printing. A successful demonstration that our low-cost wafer can 'drop-in' to an existing cell line to deliver equivalent (or better) performance compared to the incumbent technology would gate our working with industry partners to commercialize this process.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.