Jan 6 2010
XsunX, Inc. (XSNX), the developer of advanced, thin-film photovoltaic (TFPV) solar cell technologies and manufacturing processes, today announced the completion of a fully-functional CIGS (Copper Indium Gallium di Selenide) thin-film solar device.
The company is pioneering a hybrid solar cell technology that adapts manufacturing processes from the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) industry to produce CIGS solar cells deposited onto stainless steel substrate with "pseudo square" configuration which the company believes can replace traditional silicon wafer solar cells.
"With this completed sample we have reached a critical milestone in our development process, achieved through the vigilant efforts of our engineers and trusted business partner," said Tom Djokovich, CEO, XsunX, Inc. "This initial achievement illustrates a realistic set of company goals and demonstrates the strength of our relationships with the business and technical expertise that kept us on track."
Developed in partnership with an established equipment supplier to the Hard Disk Drive industry, the newly produced cell presents several compelling advantages over silicon solar wafers available on the market today.
"Approaches to mass-scale production of CIGS thin-film cells today introduce processing defects that significantly reduce cell performance," said Robert Wendt, CTO, XsunX, Inc. "Because we are leveraging stationary small-area, high-rate, production technologies and not scaling up to large area processing, we're able to strive for laboratory-metric conversion efficiencies."
In addition to being sized to match with existing HDD manufacturing processes, XsunX's new breed of TFPV manufacturing techniques will produce an appropriately proportioned cell that can be used on existing solar module production lines by manufacturers looking for a direct substitute for increasingly controversial silicon cells. Featuring a less brittle and therefore less fragile substrate, the company's CIGS device has the potential of increased yields over its silicon counterpart.
In the next stage of development, XsunX will be evaluating technical data concerning performance, conversion efficiency to continue to fine-tune each cell layer based on input collected from small-area devices, and to perfect our engineering designs.
Source: http://www.xsunx.com/