Wafer integrated micro‐scale concentrating photovoltaics

Li, Duanhui; Li, Lan; Jared, Bradley Howell; Keeler, Gordon Arthur; Miller, Bill; Wood, Michael G.; Hains, C. P.; Sweatt, William C.; Paap, Scott; Saavedra, Michael P.; Alford, Charles; Mudrick, John; Das, Ujjwal; Hegedus, Steven; Tauke‐Pedretti, Anna; Hu, Juejun; Gu, Tian

doi:10.1002/pip.3034

Cited by 14 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…The ratio of the total cell area to the active powergeneration area of the module (32 mm × 40 mm) was 31.7%, and the ratio of the active cell area to the active module area was 28.3%. Several micro-scale CPV modules employing submillimeter-scale solar cells have been recently reported [44][45][46][47][48] . Such miniaturized solar cells can also be applied to the present module design.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stretchable micro-scale concentrator photovoltaic module with 15.4% efficiency for three-dimensional curved surfaces

et al. 2021

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Stretchable photovoltaics are emerging power sources for collapsible electronics, biomedical devices, and buildings and vehicles with curved surfaces. Development of stretchable photovoltaics are crucial to achieve rapid growth of the future photovoltaic market. However, owing to their rigidity, existing thin-film solar cells based predominantly on silicon, compound semiconductors, and perovskites are difficult to apply to 3D curved surfaces, which are potential real-world candidates. Herein, we present a stretchable micro-scale concentrator photovoltaic module with a geometrical concentration ratio of 3.5×. When perfectly fitted on a 3D curved surface with a sharp curvature, the prototype module achieves an outdoor power conversion efficiency of 15.4% and the daily generated electricity yield improves to a maximum of 190% relative to a non-concentration stretchable photovoltaic module. Thus, this module design enables high areal coverage on 3D curved surfaces, while generating a higher electricity yield in a limited installation area.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stretchable micro-scale concentrator photovoltaic module with 15.4% efficiency for three-dimensional curved surfaces

et al. 2021

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“…Reproduced with permission. [ 109 ] Copyright 2018, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. In further iterations, the design was simplified to use a glass molded optical array as primary optical element and the V‐grooves as secondary.…”

Section: New Enabling Technologies For Micro Cpvmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These are a variety of proposals such as the wafer‐level SOEs based on etched inverted pyramid cavities (V‐grooves) seen in Figure 12 and further described in ref. [109]. Microlens array (MLA) mounted onto a solar cell using quartz etching processes [ 121 ] and micro‐lens manufacturing by lithography on a substrate with CIGS solar cells [ 74 ] are other approaches that classify as wafer‐integrated optics.…”

Section: New Enabling Technologies For Micro Cpvmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrated Micro‐Scale Concentrating Photovoltaics: A Scalable Path Toward High‐Efficiency, Low‐Cost Solar Power

Jost

Juejun

et al. 2023

Solar RRL

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The global energy market is seeing increases in the electricity demand of a couple of percentage points annually. The photovoltaic (PV) industry is also growing rapidly every year. One of the PV technologies is concentrator photovoltaics (CPV). CPV uses high‐efficiency multijunction solar cells and optics to concentrate sunlight, thereby significantly reducing the amount of semiconductor material needed. Yet, due to the high upfont manufacturing cost of CPV, it currently does not offer a competitive price against silicon PV. With this a new branch is introduced to the industry, micro‐CPV, which can be broadly explained as the miniaturization of the solar cells and optical components. The motivation for micro‐CPV is lowering the cost by decreasing the material volume and enabling new system architectures and high‐throughput manufacturing methods, while still maintaining high electrical efficiencies, taking advantage of a lower thermal load, shorter optical paths, lower resistive losses, and lower material volumes. Herein, a comprehensive review of the technological advances is presented, key synergies between micro‐CPV and other industries sharing similar challenges are identified, exemplified by micro‐light emitting diodes display manufacturing. New assembly process development in these industries will facilitate commercial adoption of micro‐CPV with continued miniaturization while driving down the cost.

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“…Several new fabrication processes, such as transfer printing and wafer integrated CPVs, 8 also bring opportunities for further cost reduction. At Panasonic, we developed a so‐called plastic lens‐integrated semiconductor cell (PIC) technology to address this challenge by leveraging several of our technical strengths, including circuit printing, camera lens design, and manufacturing to achieve low CPV module costs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Demonstration and error analysis of scaling‐up plastic‐integrated concentrator photovoltaic panels to 1 m²

Lee

Hayashi

Takase

2020

Progress in Photovoltaics

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Plastic lens integrated III‐V compound semiconductor cell (PIC) modules or other microconcentrator/miniconcentrator photovoltaic (CPV) modules reduce the volume and weight of CPV modules to a size comparable to flat panel photovoltaics. However, the areal density of solar cells and lenses in a PIC or other micro‐mini‐CPV modules significantly increases by at least an order of magnitude, which raises the required precision and consistency of the module assembling, because a slightly misaligned solar cell can limit the current of the whole circuit and inhibit the performance of the full module. In this study, we presented the results of a 1 m2 module consisting of 2025 solar cells with a direct‐normal‐irradiance efficiency of more than 30%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest area for a CPV module with a height of less than 5 cm reported so far. To quantify the different causes of misalignment, we proposed a probabilistic analysis to model how these errors affect the performance of the CPV module. The results show that the dominant error of the PIC module is attributed to around 0.5° misaligned orientation between the unit modules. This analysis approach can also be applied to other types of micro‐CPV modules.

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Wafer integrated micro‐scale concentrating photovoltaics

Cited by 14 publications

References 27 publications

Stretchable micro-scale concentrator photovoltaic module with 15.4% efficiency for three-dimensional curved surfaces

Stretchable micro-scale concentrator photovoltaic module with 15.4% efficiency for three-dimensional curved surfaces

Integrated Micro‐Scale Concentrating Photovoltaics: A Scalable Path Toward High‐Efficiency, Low‐Cost Solar Power

Demonstration and error analysis of scaling‐up plastic‐integrated concentrator photovoltaic panels to 1 m²

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Wafer integrated micro‐scale concentrating photovoltaics

Cited by 14 publications

References 27 publications

Stretchable micro-scale concentrator photovoltaic module with 15.4% efficiency for three-dimensional curved surfaces

Stretchable micro-scale concentrator photovoltaic module with 15.4% efficiency for three-dimensional curved surfaces

Integrated Micro‐Scale Concentrating Photovoltaics: A Scalable Path Toward High‐Efficiency, Low‐Cost Solar Power

Demonstration and error analysis of scaling‐up plastic‐integrated concentrator photovoltaic panels to 1 m2

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Demonstration and error analysis of scaling‐up plastic‐integrated concentrator photovoltaic panels to 1 m²