Zagres Limited – Study, assessment and proof of market potentials and economics of a low-cost solar cell technology

成本和效率仍然是广泛应用太阳能的主要障碍，目前全球太阳能价值510亿GB，到2020年的复合年增长率为18.7%。商用太阳能电池主要是硅基电池，成本为0.70 GB/瓦，效率在10%至15%之间，远低于行业分别设定的0.05 GB/瓦和30%的目标。最近已经开发出基于新材料的替代太阳能电池技术，例如染料敏化太阳能电池(DSCs)，它承诺通过使用廉价的材料和低成本的制造工艺，与基于硅的电池相比，成本大幅降低10倍，同时实现同等或更高的效率。DSC设备承诺了各种应用，如消费电子和透明玻璃窗发电。然而，现有的商用DSC价格昂贵，因此应用非常有限，例如用于iPad的罗技键盘。从剑桥大学高级光子与电子中心(CAPE)剥离出来的Zagres开发了一种独特的、正在申请专利的纳米结构TiO2DSC的原子层沉积(ALD)技术，该技术将钛材料的使用量减少了300倍，并导致了创纪录的18.2%的效率，比其他DSC高出4.2%。与广泛使用的硅基太阳能电池相比，通过ALD-DSC技术减少钛的使用，以及低成本的材料合成和器件制造工艺，可以大幅降低70%的成本，使更多的应用变得经济可行，例如利用玻璃窗发电；因此，它的开发可以在保持可持续性和材料安全性的同时，实现更便宜的太阳能。该项目的目的是研究、评估和量化潜在的颠覆性ALD-DSC技术在低成本、高容量应用中的经济和市场潜力。

Cost and efficiency are yet the main barriers to widespread adoption of solar energy, currentlyvalued at £51 billion globally with a compound annual growth rate of 18.7% through to 2020.Commercially available solar cells, which are mostly Silicon-based, cost 0.70 £/Watt and haveefficiencies between 10 to 15%, far from industry's targets of 0.05 £/Watt and 30%,respectively. Alternative solar cell technologies have recently been developed based on newmaterials, such as Dye-sensitized Solar Cells (DSCs) which promise substantial costreduction, by a factor of x10 as compared to Si-based cells through utilising inexpensivematerials and low-cost manufacturing processes, whilst achieving comparable or improvedefficiencies. DSC devices promise a variety of applications, such as consumer electronics andelectricity generation from transparent glass windows. However, existing commercial DSCsare yet expensive, hence have found very limited applications, e.g. Logitech keyboard foriPad.Zagres, spun out from Cambridge University's Centre for Advanced Photonics & Electronics(CAPE), has developed a unique and patent-pending Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD)technology for Nanostructured TiO2 DSCs, which reduces Titanium material use by 300times and has led to a record efficiency of 18.2%, 4.2% higher than alternative DSCs. Thereduction of Titanium use, enabled by our ALD-DSC technology, and the low-cost materialssynthesis and device fabrication processes can lead to a substantial 70% cost reduction whencompared to widely available Silicon-based solar cells, enabling far greater applications tobecome economically viable, e.g. electricity generation from glass windows; its exploitationcan hence contribute to enabling cheaper solar energy whilst maintaining sustainability &material security. The aim of this project is to study, assess and quantify the economics andmarket potentials of the potentially disruptive ALD-DSC technology for low-cost high-volumeapplications.