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EUROSTARS-EUROSTARS

E!12055 Replacing lead-based solders in Solar Panels with more environmentally-friendly conductive adhesive

Alternative title: Fjerne bly i solcelleindustrien ved å erstatte lodding med elektrisk ledende lim i solcellepaneler

Awarded: NOK 2.8 mill.

Project Manager:

Project Number:

284292

Project Period:

2018 - 2021

Funding received from:

Organisation:

Partner countries:

Solar energy is one of the most promising renewable energy sources worldwide. A major challenge for the industry is the use of lead, which is a very dangerous environmental toxin, in the assembly of modules. To date, the industry has lacked a good alternatives. Through this project, Conpart and Mosaic have developed a very promising alternative to lead soldering. Spherica technology, our silver-plated polymer particles, make conductive adhesives a cost-effective and environmentally friendly alternative with very good properties. Among other things, the technology enables more efficient solar cell technologies such as tandem, shingle, hetero-junction and back-contacted cells. The technology is now ready for upscaling to industrial volumes.

I gjennom dette prosjektet har vi vist at ledende lim basert på vår Spherica teknologi kan brukes med gode resultater både for konvensjonelle sol-moduler og shingle-modules. Det lave sølv-forbruket med Spherica gjør at denne montasjen vil være kosteffektiv sammenlignet med dagens loddeprosess. Den lave sammenstillingstemperaturen gjør at lim er veldig aktuelt for dagens nye høyeffektive solcelle teknologier. Mer en 90% av dagens sol-moduler produseres ved hjelp av blyholdig loddetinn. Bly er en av de farligste miljøgiftene vi har. UNICEF sier at 800 millioner barn har et blynivå i blodet som skaper irreversible skader i hjernen. Utfasing av bly i solmoduler er derfor en svært viktig oppgave. Dersom Spherica teknologien får gjennomslag i industrien vil dette i tillegg skape flere hundre nye arbeidsplasser.

Lead-based solder is used today to connect the Photo Voltaic (PV) cells to the current collecting busbars. We will introduce an environmentally friendly solution that is lead-free, commercially acceptable and offers more than 25 years of dependable service. Our solution is a novel conductive adhesive technology based on our silver-coated polymer spheres. There are two main reasons to look at solar module manufacturing: First, this application is by far the largest consumer of lead-based solders, and from an environmental perspective, the need for an environmentally friendly technology to replace the solder is overdue. Second, the manufacturing of silver-coated polymer particles is a scalable process, and offers a cost effective process at a large scale in a huge and strongly growing market – We are the world leaders in this technology.

Funding scheme:

EUROSTARS-EUROSTARS