E!6406 SME collaboration on new processes and products for advanced solar cells and modules

The majority of modern day solar cells use silicon in its purest form. However, the purification of silicon is a high-temperature, and thereby high-energy and high-cost process, resulting in solar cells coming at a high cost to the market. For this reason , SolarTeam wanted to look at alternatives for both sourcing of silicon and the following refining process. The SolarTeam project have developed versatile refining techniques from both primary (metallurgical) silicon and scrap material (secondary silicon) . The goal is to produce solar cells with efficiencies exceeding 17 % based on multi-crystalline and 20 % on mono-crystalline substrates. Dagens solceller benytter i hovedsak primærsilisium som råmateriale. Prosessen som brukes for å produsere dette ma terialet krever høye temperaturer, noe som fører til høyt energiforbruk og kostbare solceller. SolarTeam-prosjektet har som mål å vurdere andre og rimeligere måter å fremskaffe og raffinere silisium til bruk i solceller. SolarTeam har utviklet og testet f orskjellige raffineringsmetoder fra så vel metallurgisk silisium som skrapmaterial (sekundærmaterial). Målsettingen med prosjektet er å produsere rimelige solceller med minimum 17% effektivitet for multi-krystallinske og 20% for mono-krystallinske solcell er.

CleanSi is a start-up company that owns technology know-how in the field of production methods for cheap high quality silicon production. In the SolarTeam project, CleanSi will further develop these methods at the facilities of TotenMetal, an investor and potential customer of the CleanSi technology. The aim is to produce consistent high-quality solar grade silicon (SGS) silicon as feedstock for solar cells using a unique patented process where aluminium melt will be used to purify metallurgical grade sil icon (MG-Si) or quartz or kerf, which allows below ? 15 / kg production cost. The produced cheap high-quality material will be delivered to two potential customers of the material, TSC (A Netherlands based SME) and Solartec (Czech SME) that will assess t he material. The aim is to produce economically viable solar cells, based on CleanSi material, with efficiencies higher than 17% (as is the goal for Solartec and TSC). Both TSC and Solartec want to expand their market segments, by developing new process es and products. For this, they could use the new material from CleanSi, but this collaboration gives them another advantage: by collaborating in a European funded project, they will be able to work together with two leading research institutes in the fie ld, which they would not be able to afford on a bilateral basis. Hence, Solartec and TSC will develop innovative processes during the project, based on the assessment of the needs for the new material delivered by CleanSi. Toten Metall (TM) is a medium sized Norwegian enterprise which produces aluminum foundry alloys using scrap as raw material. TM drives on its high-tech and innovative production methods that enables them to compete on the highly competitive aluminum market. TM is looking for new busin ess opportunities and timing for entering in a renewable energy business was never better in an international effort to fight climate change.