Nanowire photovoltaics

这项提议将开发一种新的光伏(PV)太阳能电池技术，最初是为集中式光伏(CPV)市场设计的，该市场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。光伏产业目前由两种技术主导。一方面，存在成本相对较低但效率相对较低的硅基太阳能电池，主要用作住宅光伏市场的平板。另一方面，使用元素周期表III和V族材料的非常昂贵但高效的太阳能电池使用非常高的光集中度，在公用事业规模的CPV太阳能发电场中占据了一个利基市场。通过将III-V材料与硅相结合，我们的建议填补了这两个极端与市场需求之间的技术空白。大多数高效的CPV电池都使用锗(Ge)材料，这是一个严重的缺点，因为它的成本和稀缺性。因此，为了在经济上可行，CPV通常仅限于阳光充足的气候下的大型太阳能发电场。我们通过合理设计和合成基于纳米线的光伏器件来解决这一限制，这种光伏器件用更便宜的硅衬底取代昂贵的Ge，从而通过降低成本实现领先的性能(每瓦特成本)，同时具有与现有CPV电池相当的效率。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，而且还将用于集中度较低的较小商业规模的项目，以及加拿大等太阳辐射较低的地区。我们将与加拿大CPV公司摩根太阳能共同开发这项技术。这项提议提供了一种新技术，为加拿大开辟了全新的市场，为加拿大带来了巨大的经济效益，并提供了一种清洁能源。

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.