14 DAY TRIAL // University of Cambridge investigators announce the development of a new method for obtaining solar-grade silicon at low cost. This improvement could finally see efficient solar cells making their way into mainstream use for electricity generation.
Producing energy from renewable sources is an important drive for science today, and the new study is a very important step in the right direction. The main problem preventing the wide-scale adoption of solar cells is that they have a relatively low conversion efficiency.
This means that they convert less than one fifth of the sunlight their receive into electrical current. This rate needs to increase significantly before people adopt the technology as a preferred method of producing electricity for their homes and businesses.
The Sun is the ultimate power source in our solar system. Within a minute or so, it provides Earth with enough energy to power all of our equipment for a full day. Despite this abundance, we are unable to make good use of it on account of existing limitations in the way we use silicon.
The photovoltaic (PV) industry would definitely appreciate the boon, experts say. At this point, companies have to charge a lot for solar panels featuring solar-grade silicon, since producing this material entails a huge cost.
This is where the Cambridge innovation comes in. Experts at the university are now testing and up-scaling a method for producing this type of silicon at a much lower price than currently possible.
In fact, the team behind the study believes that their approach could save as much as 80 percent of current energy and cost requirements, while at the same time producing 90 percent less carbon dioxide.
The preferred method for obtaining silicon today entails the use of 10 tons of CO2 for each ton of silicon produced, plus an additional 45 tons of CO2 later on in the refinement stage of the process.
“It’s somewhat ironic that such an environmentally destructive process supplies 95% of the silicon required by the PV industry to harness a clean and sustainable energy source,” says Dr. Antony Cox.
“In fact, a solar cell fabricated with the Siemens process would need to be operating for up to six years to match the same energy required to make it,” adds the expert, who is based at the Cambridge Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy.