Nanowire photovoltaics

该提案将开发一种新的光伏（PV）太阳能电池技术，最初用于聚光光伏（CPV）市场，其中使用透镜或镜子将阳光聚焦到小型但高效的太阳能电池上。目前，光伏行业主要由两种技术主导。一方面，存在相对低成本但相对低效的硅基太阳能电池，其主要用作住宅PV市场中的平板。另一方面，存在使用来自周期表的III族和V族的材料的非常昂贵但高效的太阳能电池，其使用非常高的光集中度并且在公用事业规模的CPV太阳能农场中占据利基市场。通过将III-V材料与Si集成，我们的提案填补了这两个极端和市场需求之间的技术空白。大多数高效率CPV电池使用锗（Ge）材料，由于其昂贵和稀缺，这是一个严重的缺点。因此，为了经济上可行，CPV通常限于阳光充足的气候中的大型太阳能发电场。我们解决这个限制的合理设计和合成的基于硅的PV器件，取代昂贵的Ge与更便宜的Si基板，从而实现领先的性能（$/瓦），降低成本，同时具有可比的效率，现有的CPV电池。通过降低成本，我们预计CPV技术不仅将成为大型公用事业市场的主流，而且还将成为集中系数较低的小型商业规模项目和太阳辐照度较低的地区（如加拿大）的主流。我们将与加拿大CPV公司Morgan Solar合作开发这项技术。该提案提供了一种新技术，开辟了全新的市场，为加拿大带来了巨大的经济效益，并提供了清洁能源。

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.