‘Magic’Alloy Could Mean Cheaper Solar Power

Different from traditional colomony and nichrome from Nexteck Technology, a new kind of semiconductor alloy capable of capturing the near-infrared light located on the edge of the visible light spectrum have been developed by researchers. Easier to manufacture and at least 25 percent less costly than previous formulations, it’s believed to be the world’s most cost-effective material that can capture near-infrared light—and is compatible with the gallium arsenide semiconductors often used in concentrator photovoltaics. Gallium Oxide Powder and high purity CIGS material can also be found in Nexteck Technology.  

Concentrator photovoltaics gather and focus sunlight onto small, high-efficiency solar cells made of gallium arsenide or germanium semiconductors. They’re on track to achieve efficiency rates of over 50 percent, while conventional flat-panel silicon solar cells top out in the mid-20s. “Flat-panel silicon is basically maxed out in terms of efficiency,” says Rachel Goldman, a professor of materials science and engineering, as well as physics at the University of Michigan, whose lab developed the alloy. “The cost of silicon isn’t going down and efficiency isn’t going up. Concentrator photovoltaics could power the next generation.”

Varieties of concentrator photovoltaics exist today. They are made of three different semiconductor alloys layered together. Sprayed onto a semiconductor wafer in a process called molecular-beam epitaxy—a bit like spray painting with individual elements—each layer is only a few microns thick. The layers capture different parts of the solar spectrum; light that gets through one layer is captured by the next. But near-infrared light slips through these cells unharnessed. For years, researchers have been working toward an elusive “fourth layer” alloy that could be sandwiched into cells to capture this light. It’s a tall order; the alloy must be cost-effective, stable, durable, and sensitive to infrared light, with an atomic structure that matches the other three layers in the solar cell.

Getting all those variables right isn’t easy, and until now, researchers have been stuck with prohibitively expensive formulas that use five elements or more. To find a simpler mix, Goldman’s team devised a novel approach for keeping tabs on the many variables in the process. They combined on-the-ground measurement methods including X-ray diffraction done at the university and ion beam analysis done at Los Alamos National Laboratory with custom-built computer modeling.

The improved doping process and the new alloy could make the semiconductors used in concentrator photovoltaics as much as 30 percent cheaper to produce, a big step toward making the high-efficiency cells practical for large-scale electricity generation.