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I honestly have no idea which solar cell stories to pay attention to anymore. They are so abundant, and it seems like we never get any follow ups. Does someone

by JeffL 14y ago

I honestly have no idea which solar cell stories to pay attention to anymore. They are so abundant, and it seems like we never get any follow ups. Does someone with expert knowledge care to comment about if this story is more significant than all the other solar cell breakthroughs?

durkie 14y ago
Cool that they did it, and it's a nice first step, but I think the "cheap, abundant carbon!" angle of the story is misleading. Silicon is pretty damn abundant, and they're complaining about how expensive it is -- it's the processing that matters, and right now processing cheap, abundant carbon to make defect-free layers of graphene, or uniform mixtures of carbon nanotubes (free of catalyst particles, of identical chiralities, lengths, diameters and tube number) is very hard and expensive. Personally, I'm super interested in what Twin Creeks Technologies (http://www.twincreekstechnologies.com/solar/ http://www.twincreekstechnologies.com/solar/ -- no affiliation) is going to do. Their processing technology is completely out of left field and seems like it has huge potential.
- makomk 14y ago
  They seem to be talking about the abundance of carbon in comparison to the indium used in silicon-based panels, rather than because silicon itself is scarce.
  - bathat 14y ago
    Indium is only used for the clear ITO electrode, though. So if scarcity of Indium were the only concern, then only the "front" carbon electrode would be relevant--the rest of the photovoltaic structure could be anything you wanted (including Si).
  - durkie 14y ago
    Yes, that is a creeping problem. Indium is definitely getting strained, and the sputtering process used to deposit ITO can be as low as like 3% deposition efficiency. I just had a proposal rejected by dept of energy for a composite metal/ceramic ITO replacement :)
- xyzzy123 14y ago
  Agree with you on the "abundant carbon" point - Currently, nanotubes are more expensive than gold and graphene on PET is something like $100 / square inch (from graphene supermarket :) But it seems clear that prices for these materials is dropping - and will drop much more in the future, especially with industrial demand. Interesting times!
wamatt 14y ago
It's significant from the perspective that it represents a new baseline. This graph helps place, what you're talking about, in perspective. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PVeff(rev110408U).jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PVeff(rev110408U).jpg

by JeffL 14y ago

durkie 14y ago

Cool that they did it, and it's a nice first step, but I think the "cheap, abundant carbon!" angle of the story is misleading. Silicon is pretty damn abundant, and they're complaining about how expensive it is -- it's the processing that matters, and right now processing cheap, abundant carbon to make defect-free layers of graphene, or uniform mixtures of carbon nanotubes (free of catalyst particles, of identical chiralities, lengths, diameters and tube number) is very hard and expensive. Personally, I'm super interested in what Twin Creeks Technologies (http://www.twincreekstechnologies.com/solar/ http://www.twincreekstechnologies.com/solar/ -- no affiliation) is going to do. Their processing technology is completely out of left field and seems like it has huge potential.

makomk 14y ago
They seem to be talking about the abundance of carbon in comparison to the indium used in silicon-based panels, rather than because silicon itself is scarce.
- bathat 14y ago
  Indium is only used for the clear ITO electrode, though. So if scarcity of Indium were the only concern, then only the "front" carbon electrode would be relevant--the rest of the photovoltaic structure could be anything you wanted (including Si).
- durkie 14y ago
  Yes, that is a creeping problem. Indium is definitely getting strained, and the sputtering process used to deposit ITO can be as low as like 3% deposition efficiency. I just had a proposal rejected by dept of energy for a composite metal/ceramic ITO replacement :)
xyzzy123 14y ago
Agree with you on the "abundant carbon" point - Currently, nanotubes are more expensive than gold and graphene on PET is something like $100 / square inch (from graphene supermarket :) But it seems clear that prices for these materials is dropping - and will drop much more in the future, especially with industrial demand. Interesting times!

wamatt 14y ago

It's significant from the perspective that it represents a new baseline. This graph helps place, what you're talking about, in perspective. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PVeff(rev110408U).jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PVeff(rev110408U).jpg