Thin Film Solar Panels that are Flexible
Printed High Efficiency Solar Energy
Nanosolar is working with leading research universities on the research and development of solar cells based on next-generation architectures with the potential for delivering significant additional cost savings in the future.
As part of this, Nanosolar has developed some of the world's most advanced research solar cells based on ultra-thin absorbers. Such ultra-thin-absorber cells are based on semiconductor depositions up to 100x thinner than conventional thin-film solar cells (which in turn are already 100x thinner than the crystalline Silicon cells that define the mainstream of today's market). Ultra-thin absorber flilms necessarily require 3D nanocomposite architecture in order to make it possible to absorb an interesting fraction of the incoming sunlight despite the ultra-thin layers.
Solar cells based on ultra-thin absorbers deliver the opportunity of additional cost savings through further reduced materials utilization, the opportunity of using less expensive materials and new classes of semiconductors, as well as the opportunity of higher efficiency due to control and design of the solar cells at the very length scale at which most every of the critical quantumphysical processes occur in solar cells.
Ultra-thin-absorber cells can effectively circumvent the physics-based limitations in common low-cost semiconductor materials by virtue of 3D nanocomposite architecture. If charges need to be transported only several nanometers in distance (without much opportunity for a loss), the requirements on the semiconductor material can be relaxed.
Nanosolar has successfully nanoengineered some of the world's most advanced solar cells with the exact, "ideal" three-dimensional device architecture and owns key intellectual property rights on a broad range of the kinds of future solar-cell architectures and process techniques that have the potential to lead to substantial further improvements over the product technology that Nanosolar is bringing to market today.
