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New tool for analyzing solar-cell materials
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/impurities-to-efficiency-software-0207.html[font face=Times, Times New Roman, Serif][font size=5]New tool for analyzing solar-cell materials[/font]
[font size=4]Website offers a way of optimizing solar cell materials and production.[/font]
David L. Chandler, MIT News Office
February 7, 2012
[font size=3]…
An online tool called “Impurities to Efficiency” (known as I2E) allows companies or researchers exploring alternative manufacturing strategies to plug in descriptions of their planned materials and processing steps. After about one minute of simulation, I2E gives an indication of exactly how efficient the resulting solar cell would be in converting sunlight to electricity.
…
Free of charge, the I2E website has been online since July, and users have already carried out approximately 2,000 simulations. The details of how the system works and examples of industrial impact will be reported soon in a paper in the trade journal Photovoltaics International. The U.S. Department of Energy, which supported the research, has also reported on the new tool in an entry that will be posted on the agency's blog.
…
By using the tool, a company called Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates (recently acquired by Applied Materials), which makes equipment for producing solar cells, was able to fine-tune one of the furnaces they sell. The changes enabled the equipment to produce silicon wafers for solar cells five times faster than it originally did, even while slightly improving the overall efficiency of the resulting cells.
The company “started with a process that was fairly long,” Buonassisi says. They initially found a way to speed it up, but with too much of a sacrifice in performance. Ultimately, he says, using I2E, “we came up with a process that was about five times faster than the original, while performing just as well.”
…[/font][/font]
[font size=4]Website offers a way of optimizing solar cell materials and production.[/font]
David L. Chandler, MIT News Office
February 7, 2012
[font size=3]…
An online tool called “Impurities to Efficiency” (known as I2E) allows companies or researchers exploring alternative manufacturing strategies to plug in descriptions of their planned materials and processing steps. After about one minute of simulation, I2E gives an indication of exactly how efficient the resulting solar cell would be in converting sunlight to electricity.
…
Free of charge, the I2E website has been online since July, and users have already carried out approximately 2,000 simulations. The details of how the system works and examples of industrial impact will be reported soon in a paper in the trade journal Photovoltaics International. The U.S. Department of Energy, which supported the research, has also reported on the new tool in an entry that will be posted on the agency's blog.
…
By using the tool, a company called Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates (recently acquired by Applied Materials), which makes equipment for producing solar cells, was able to fine-tune one of the furnaces they sell. The changes enabled the equipment to produce silicon wafers for solar cells five times faster than it originally did, even while slightly improving the overall efficiency of the resulting cells.
The company “started with a process that was fairly long,” Buonassisi says. They initially found a way to speed it up, but with too much of a sacrifice in performance. Ultimately, he says, using I2E, “we came up with a process that was about five times faster than the original, while performing just as well.”
…[/font][/font]
