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Thin/flexible cells are often called "eco", because "less material", but then I find the composition and they are made of Arsenic, Cadmium or similar toxic non-
by labawi 5y ago
Thin/flexible cells are often called "eco", because "less material", but then I find the composition and they are made of Arsenic, Cadmium or similar toxic non-degradable materials that will end up in the environment.
This one seems actually seems very ecological, or at least not toxic:
> tungsten diselenide and contacts of gold spanned by a layer of conducting graphene that is just a single atom thick
They don't mention Cadmium Sulfide surface layer as seems standard in CIGS. Hope they don't feel the need to add it in the efficiency optimization process.
EDIT: Doing some calculation on CIGS with 700Å (70nm) CdS layer [1], 1m² of solar panel would have about 1m²·70nm·5g/cm³ = 1m²·70e-9m·5e6g/m³ ~ 0.4g of CdS.
[1] https://www.nrel.gov/pv/copper-indium-gallium-diselenide-solar-cells.html https://www.nrel.gov/pv/copper-indium-gallium-diselenide-sol...
- truculent 5y agoThere was an interesting post shared here recently on low-tech solar panels, which might be able to trade off efficiency for recyclability: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/10/how-to-build-a-low-tech-solar-panel.html https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/10/how-to-build-a-low...
- labawi 5y ago> The plug was an alloy of zinc and antimony – which we now know is a semiconductor. It was alternately capped by German silver (a nickel, copper, and zinc alloy) and copper on opposite ends. While the design may be possible to make and repair in artisanal manner, it uses a lot of antimony and any repairs would likely shed more Sb than there is Cd in an entire CIGS panel (though In and Ga may be a concern). If the design was resource-optimized, it would still have a potent monk-killer (Sb) and then it wouldn't be worth it to recycle all of the panels.