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The financial case for fossil vitality is teetering on the sting of collapse, and the German firm NexWafe GmbH is about to offer it one closing shove into the abyss. NexWafe is constructing a brand new manufacturing unit that may ship new low-cost silicon wafers flying into the photo voltaic cell market. To gild the inexperienced lily, a part of the associated fee financial savings entails kerf, a humorous phrase for the intense drawback of supplies waste.
Silicon Wafers For Photo voltaic Cells: Kerf Issues
Silicon wafers kind the center of silicon photo voltaic cells, and producers have been falling over themselves to search out extra environment friendly methods to provide wafers. The present manufacturing methodology of alternative entails melting silicon right into a mass of polycrystalline silicon (aka polysilicon amongst different names) and hunting down impurities. A seed-crystal rising course of known as the Czochralski methodology is then used to “pull” monocrystalline silicon ingots from the mass. Lastly, the ingots are sliced into wafers.
Silicon wafers may also be constituted of polycrystalline ingots. Photo voltaic cells made with polycrystalline wafers are inclined to have a decrease photo voltaic conversion effectivity. On the plus aspect, they have an inclination to value much less and are thought-about to be an inexpensive possibility for some use instances.
Both method, the entire wafer manufacturing course of takes time, vitality, and cash. A part of the cash entails the kerf, which refers back to the silicon waste produced when ingots are sliced. It’s like sawdust, however for silicon. The gear producer Meyer Burger launched a brand new kerf-reducing diamond cutter for silicon ingots again in 2014, however there may be nonetheless room for enchancment.
For that matter, the Czochralski methodology dates again to 1915 and is known as after its inventor, the Polish scientist Jan Czochralski, who got here up with the method when he went to dip his pen in an inkwell and hit molten tin as a substitute (so sayeth Wikipedia). Clearly the time is ripe for a change.
The Lengthy Highway to Kerf-Free Silicon Wafers
That brings us to NexWafe. The corporate has simply acquired an infusion of €30 million (a bit greater than US$32 million) to hurry up work on a commercial-scale manufacturing facility, to be positioned in Bitterfeld, a city within the southeast a part of the German state Saxony-Anhalt. One other manufacturing unit is to comply with in Saudi Arabia if all goes in line with plan.
The Bitterfeld undertaking is the newest step in an extended R&D journey. NexWafe spun out of the Fraunhofer Institute for Photo voltaic Vitality Techniques ISE again in 2015 with an help from Franhofer Enterprise. The startup was tasked with deploying a brand new, zero-kerf manufacturing methodology developed by the analysis workforce of Stefan Rebar over the earlier 15 years.
Rebar is the founder and CEO of NexWafe, and all that tough work is about to repay. The brand new “EpiNex” kerfless wafer relies on epitaxy, which is a technique of rising crystals on a substrate. If the substrate is detachable, you find yourself with an ultra-thin layer of crystals within the desired form and dimension, without having for a kerf-producing reducing step.
“The method focus is on atmospheric strain chemical vapor deposition (APCVD) at temperatures as much as 1300°C. This course of is well-known from microelectronics, however needed to be radically tailored for photovoltaic functions by way of throughput of the gear,” Fraunhofer defined in a 2015 press launch.
“Stefan Reber and his workforce of 30 individuals have developed completely different generations of deposition reactors, starting from very versatile batch-type laboratory setups to giant multi-chamber in-line programs with the choice of constantly depositing p- and n-doped epitaxial layers,” Fraunhofer continued, with p- and n- referring to 2 completely different photo voltaic cell variations.
A New Wave Of Low-Value, Versatile Silicon Photo voltaic Cells
In accordance with NexWafe, the brand new kerfless silicon wafer will value 30% lower than typical wafers, so whoa if true.
“Totally suitable with typical photo voltaic cell manufacturing, NexWafe affords a 70% discount in vitality consumption throughout manufacturing. NexWafe’s steady, direct gas-to-wafer manufacturing course of additionally minimizes waste, leading to wafers which might be 30% inexpensive than typical wafers,” the corporate affirms.
NexWafe has already demonstrated its course of on EpiNex wafers which might be solely 50 microns throughout, or concerning the diameter of a human hair. They’re additionally lower than one-third as thick as typical wafers. That opens up a wider vary of photo voltaic cell functions that decision for lighter weight and elevated flexibility.
As soon as the manufacturing unit is up and operating, NexWafe expects to hit a purpose of 90 microns.
How Inexperienced Can Photo voltaic Go?
There being no such factor as a free lunch, silicon manufacturing is an industrial course of with industrial impacts. Nonetheless, an estimated 70% discount in vitality consumption is not any small potatoes. As calculated by NexWafe, that financial savings interprets right into a financial savings of greater than 6 million tons of carbon dioxide for each 10 gigawatts of wafers produced.
That’s good for the planet, and it’s additionally good for fossil vitality stakeholders on the prowl for carbon credit.
“The long run worth of carbon credit is predicted to succeed in $60 per ton of averted emissions. Wanting forward, a big manufacturing facility utilizing EpiNex™ know-how can be able to producing greater than $360M a 12 months in carbon credit,” NexWafe explains.
Which will clarify why Aramco Ventures is behind the €30M setup for the Bitterfeld facility, together with Reliance New Vitality Restricted and ATHOS Enterprise GmbH, amongst others. The brand new funding joins the gravity-based vitality storage startup Vitality Vault, amongst different notches on Aramco Ventures’s rising clear tech belt.
All else being equal, Aramco Ventures’s dad or mum firm, Aramco, may proceed to squeeze petroleum out of the bottom underneath a carbon market state of affairs, by deploying carbon credit for investments in inexperienced startups like NexWafe.
That will depend on partly on policymakers, and partly on client demand for petroleum merchandise. After some early suits and begins in electrical automobile know-how, the transportation market is lastly starting to float right into a extra sustainable mannequin. Plastics and different artificial merchandise are additionally displaying indicators of deserting the petroleum ship as new bio-materials floor.
On the photo voltaic aspect, driving down the price of silicon wafers is only one piece of an increasing puzzle. Keep watch over perovskites, see-through photovoltaic home windows, inexperienced hydrogen, and agrivoltaics for extra indicators that solar energy is lifting a extra sustainable financial system from the ashes of the fossil vitality period.
Right here within the US, even so-called “crimson” states have been succumbing to the siren name of decarbonization. Of specific curiosity is the Aramco Ventures-backed vitality storage startup Kind Vitality, which is establishing store in West Virginia (extra CleanTechnica protection is right here).
If all goes in line with plan, Kind’s lengthy period, iron-air know-how will assist speed up the tempo of renewable vitality growth throughout the US, no matter state stage partisan politics.
No extra Trainwreck Twitter. Discover me on Spoutible: @TinaMCasey or LinkedIn @TinaMCasey or Mastodon @Casey or Put up: @tinamcasey
Photograph: New methodology to scale back the price of silicon wafers for photo voltaic cells (photograph courtesy of NexWafe).
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