Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 12.9
Nanotechnology company example
Company
Nanosolar
Country
USA
Types
CIGS nanoparticles
Substrate
Metal foil or glass (low cost)
Manufacturing
Non-vacuum printing of nanoparticle ink to a substrate.
These are transferred to electronic fi lm of high quality
using the rapid thermal processing (RTP) method
Effi ciency
14%
Cell cost
$0.36 per watt
Panel cost
$0.99 per watt
Throughput
1 panel per 10 seconds
Currently PVs made from nanoscale materials are not suitable for large-
scale installations because of issues not only with their effi ciency - which it
is hoped will be improved - but also with their long-term stability. These
problems are due to the fact that there are some factors that are diffi cult
to experimentally understand in the nanoscale range, hence high power
computation is required, which until recently was a problem (Anai
et al.
,
2010). Currently, because of the development of high performance compu-
ting and advances in the calculation of electronic structures, it is easier to
consider material properties using atomistics information, enabling resear-
chers to develop more materials with specifi c properties through
calculation.
The current nanotechnology PV research and development focus is on
(Manna and Mahajan, 2007):
quantum dots
nanotubes.
The next sections will explain each of these areas in detail.
12.5.1 Quantum dots
The principle related to this technology was fi rst discovered by Ekimov in
the 1980s (Ekimov and Onushchenko, 1981) and the technology was initi-
ally applied to LED technology. The quantum dot, which was fi rst defi ned
by Reed
et al.
(1988), has properties between discrete modules and semi-
conductors (Norris, 1995; Bawendi
et al.
, 2000; Brus, 2007).
Quantum dots (QDs) are made up from nanostructures of semiconductor
materials which are categorized by their confi nement dimensions. Figure
12.7 (Nozik, 2010) outlines samples of quantization in nanoscale materials
and where the quantum dot falls in this band. Quantum dots are normally
in the range of 2-10 nanometres in diameter, containing hundreds to
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