Emcore and HelioVolt Win Awards for Solar Innovation
Source/Type: Reported News

Author: CompoundSemi News Staff

July 28, 2008... Research and Development (R&D) Magazine gave several solar companies awards for their significant commercial innovations. Last week, Emcore and HelioVolt received separate awards from the magazine for their solar innovations. Emcore won the award for achieving a world record of 33% conversion efficiency in space for Inverted Metamorphic (IMM) multi-junction solar cells. Heliovolt of Austin, Texas USA, received the award for demonstrating a simpler, faster end-to-end process for printing high quality thin film (CIGS) photovoltaic (PV) systems. Emcore collaborated with the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Vehicle Systems Directorate of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. Emcore says that it anticipates 42-45% conversion efficiency with when using the same cells with solar concentrator optics. Emcore also predicts that it will reduce the cost of power generated by solar by 10 to 20%, and it will commercialize the technology in 2009. Emcore News Release.

HelioVolt says that it won the award with the help of the NREL for developing a hybrid process for the production of large grain, high quality copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) thin film solar devices. The HelioVolt/NREL collaboration employed a non-vacuum technique developed at NREL and licensed by HelioVolt to precisely apply liquid precursors under standard atmospheric conditions onto a printing plate and substrate, which can be made from various building materials including glass, metals, roofing materials, and plastics. HelioVolt’s patented FASST process was then used to reactively bond the inks with the high-performance CIGS crystals. HelioVolt News Release

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