New iJET Solar Cell is as Easy to Make as Pizza

Written by Andrew Williams
Published on October 5th, 2008

An Australian scientist has developed a new method of manufacturing solar cells using nothing more than some nail polish remover, a pizza oven and a standard inkjet printer.

The iJET technique is so easy and cheap to carry out that it could revolutionize access to solar technology in the developing world.

In a recent radio interview (audio), Nicole Kuepper, a 23 year-old PhD student at the University of New South Wales, explained the process.


Firstly, she takes a standard silicon solar cell and sprays it with a substance similar to nail polish. Then, she inkjet prints something like nail polish remover onto the wafer in a set pattern in the same way that you’d print a normal photo. This enables the creation of high-resolution patterns on the cell at a very low cost. The cell is then metallized with an aluminum spray and baked at a very low temperature of around 550 fahrenheit in “something like a pizza oven.”

Kuepper went on to explain how solar cells are currently manufactured using expensive “high-tech, high-cleanliness equipment,” too costly for many countries in the developing world, adding, “we’re trying to do away with all of that so that so we can ensure that these solar cells can actually be manufactured in a developing country’s environment that you might find in say Ghana or Laos for example.”

http://cleantechnica.com/2008/10/05/new-ijet-solar-cell-is-as-easy-to-make-as-pizza/

But NO! We need nukes, coal, natural gas, biofuel and everything else the oil companies own.

Cheers to Nicole on her discovery!

The Cheney Dicks and the Exxons of this world have done everything they could to convince everyone that everything besides oil was too expensive to get.

I Love stuff like this!!!!!

Well, I'll just run down to the drugstore and pick up some of that.

First you find an Elephant.

The Silicon wafer she starts with is not something you bake in the oven.

cell onto the substrate without all of the high-tech, high-cleanliness processes that are being used now? The idea being to buy solar cells somewhere else and handle the production locally or regionally?

Just wondering about this because I have no technical knowledge of how this is done.

What is described here is an assembly issue. In order for the completed solar cell array to last, it has to be done without contaminating the wafers.

This technique needs to be field tested for the useful life of the array, to determine if there is any saving.

them to third world countries, and have them assemble the array using acceptably clean, but not super-clean high-tech methods. Does that sound right? Otherwise, this idea would be a non-starter.

It's clean or it isn't. Any contamination is undesirable. The semiconductor junction on the surface of the wafer is very thin and contamination can cause surface corrosion that may render the entire cell, or even a series string of cells inoperable.
The only savings I can see is in labor cost. Most of the materials to manufacture the arrays have to be shipped to the manufacturing facility and paid for at market prices. Unless there is a supply of materials available locally at a cost that would be below that of the materials in a completed array, I fail to see the advantage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotopia_Emerging

Nicole Kuepper is the living embodiment of "Lou" in the story. Or close enough, lol.

But hey, if not, congrats Nicole for thinking outside the mainstream and coming up with a better way!

The reporter missed whatever the actual story might have been, because what is described here is already a standard lift-off metallization.

The "material like nail polish" is called photo-resist.

UNSW does some good work, but this story missed whatever is the point of whatever this particular one of hundreds of things they've done over the last couple of decades there.

Who wouldn't want to print out their own electricity?

I wonder how much efficiency is gained in clean-room manufacturing? I bet it's very small.

This is not a new development.

..."Today, one-third of the world's population is without electricity - no lights to read by at night, no radio or TV to stay informed, and no fridge to store life-saving vaccines. There is a clear link between electricity and living standards and Nicole believes passionately that photovoltaic technology is the key to addressing poverty, by giving everyone access to cheap, green electricity.

A typical photovoltaic cell is made of a thin boron doped P-type (P for positive) silicon wafer with positively charged 'holes' (missing electrons). One side of this original wafer is then doped with phosphorus to create extra electrons, and is called N-type (N for negative). Where the P and N-type silicon meet a junction is created that separates electrons and holes when exposed to light. Metal contact is made to both the P and N-type silicon allowing electrons to flow out of the N-type silicon, through a light bulb and back around to the P-type silicon. This movement of electrons constitutes an electric current - thus converting light into electricity!

Unfortunately photovoltaic cells are expensive to produce, as you traditionally need PCA_Nicole_DrShiaccess to elaborate, ‘clean' manufacturing plants staffed by highly trained technicians. Most solar cells are therefore manufactured in developed countries that experience high tax, transport and labour costs, putting the technology well out of the reach of poor countries.

Nicole has spent the last two years researching an alternative manufacturing process and has designed and patented an affordable, simple and innovative photovoltaic device called the iJET Cell. Using Inkjet printing, aluminium spray and a pizza oven, Nicole has created metal contacts to both the negative and positive sections of a solar cell in the simple, low temperature process.


When asked to describe the process she says "To pattern the cell we spray on something like nail polish and then inkjet print a kind of nail polish remover which lets us etch certain parts of the wafer. This creates a metallisation pattern so we can deposit aluminium on the back surface of the solar cell and create our metal contacts to both the P and N-type silicon simultaneously using a very cheap, low temperature pizza oven! And hey presto we've created a simple, low-cost solar cell without having to use expensive high tech equipment or high temperature processes!"..."

http://www.amonline.net.au/eureka/index.cfm?objectID=A4D69CF1-9890-B67D-2409EF3BFCD8F038&view=pca&displayEntry=true

This is the website for the Australian award for science that Kuepper won. As can be seen, this is different from the suppositions stated earlier in the thread.