Inexpensive, high-efficiency solar cells

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Abundant and sustainable energy production is required to mitigate climate change. Solar-derived, renewable energy is universally available and therefore has great potential to reduce climate change once it becomes cost-competitive. To achieve cost parity with the electric grid, at ~$0.04/kWh, both decreased photovoltaic (PV) price and increased efficiency are needed. Current state-of-the-art PV technologies fail to achieve cost parity because they are either inexpensive to fabricate but inefficient at capturing solar energy, or highly efficient but expensive to fabricate. Producing grid-parity energy will trigger enormous economic growth; however, in order to capitalize on this growth our Canadian industry partners, competing with dominant world players, especially in Japan, Germany and China, need to leverage innovative technologies such as that described in this proposal. To overcome this cost parity bottleneck, the PIand collaborators (Prof. Hong Guo and Prof. Kirk Bevan) propose to develop a novel semiconductor fabrication method, metal-catalyzed lateral growth, to enable third-generation PVs that are both inexpensive and highly efficient. Having worked in high-quality materials integration for the last 14 years, the PI has recently grown high-quality, semiconductor nanowires (Si and Ge) on amorphous (SiO2) and lattice-mismatched substrates. He now wants to expand this technology beyond the micro-scale to inexpensively cover large areas. This program will produce high-quality and high-efficiency semiconductors on inexpensive substrates that will build a sturdy foundation for third-generation PVs through selective, metal-catalyzed growth upon which grid-parityPVs can be built within the next few years. The high-quality personnel assigned to this program will gain valuable and broad experience in PVs, materials growth, materials characterization, device fabrication and device characterization. While the research described in this proposal will be directed at developing third-generation PVs, this technology could also be used more broadly and impact many other applications including large area electronics, computer processors, and telecommunications.