Nanowire photovoltaics

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This proposal will develop a new photovoltaic (PV) solar cell technology initially intended for the concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) market, where a lens or mirror is used to focus sunlight onto a small but highly efficient solar cell. The PV industry is presently dominated by two technologies. On the one hand, there exist relatively low cost but relatively inefficient silicon-based solar cells, used predominantly as flat panels in residential PV markets. On the other hand, there are very expensive but highly efficient solar cells using materials from group III and V of the periodic table that use very high light concentration and occupy a niche market in utility scale CPV solar farms. By integrating III-V material with Si, our proposal fills a technological void between these two extremes and a market need. Most high efficiency CPV cells use germanium (Ge) material, which is a serious drawback due to its expense and scarcity. As a result, to be economically viable, CPV is typically restricted to large solar farms in sunny climates. We address this limitation by the rational design and synthesis of a nanowire-based PV device that replaces expensive Ge with cheaper Si substrates, thereby achieving leading performance ($/Watt) by lowering cost while having comparable efficiency to existing CPV cells. By lowering cost, we expect CPV technology to not only become mainstream for the large-scale utility market, but also for smaller, commercial scale projects at lower concentration factors and in areas of lower solar irradiance such as Canada. We will develop this technology with Morgan Solar, a Canadian CPV company. This proposal provides a new technology that opens up entirely new markets with significant economic benefit to Canada, and a source of clean energy.