MIT Spinoff, 1366 Technologies, Reaches (18%) Efficiency Goal, Shines More Light on its Solar Cell…

MIT Spinoff, 1366 Technologies, Reaches Efficiency Goal, Shines More Light on its Solar Cell Design

Wade Roush 9/14/09

Back in February, Lexington, MA-based solar energy startup 1366 Technologies http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2009/02/05/1366s-campaign-to-make-better-cheaper-solar-cells-gets-boost-from-department-of-energy/">won an award from the U.S. Department of Energy worth as much as $3 million. The catch: it had to show that its techniques for making more efficient photovoltaic cells, born in the laboratory of MIT mechanical engineer Emanuel “Ely” Sachs, would actually work on an industrial scale.

Today the venture-backed company revealed that it has hit one of the biggest milestones toward collecting the full DOE award—producing high-efficiency photovoltaic cells in 6-by-6-inch wafers, the standard size used in solar panels—ahead of schedule. The company also took the wraps off the two methods it’s using to make the cells more efficient, information that had been closely guarded until now.

Unlike many of the other solar technology companies in the Boston area, http://www.1366tech.com/">1366 isn’t trying to reinvent the material used in photovoltaic panels: plain silicon that comes in either an expensive “monocrystalline” variety (a single big crystal) or a cheaper “multicrystalline” form (the type chosen by 1366). The two techniques pioneered by the company, according to Craig Lund, the startup’s director of business development, are purely mechanical, involving texturing the surface of cells to trap more light and reducing the width of the metal wires that manufacturers lay across the cells’ surfaces to collect free electrons.

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The honeycomb texturing technique by itself, increases overall solar cell efficiency by 1 percent, while making the metallization lines thinner boosts efficiency by another 1 percent or more, according to an announcement released today by 1366.

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