metallisation

LONGi’s has unveiled a suite of new technologies intended to demonstrate how the PV industry can innovate its way out of its current malaise.

Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE claim to have reduced the silver content of TOPCon solar cells tenfold.

Wood Mackenzie has warned of a supply bottleneck as the renewable energy shift drives a spike in global copper demand over the next decade.

Fraunhofer ISE has developed a solar cell which uses “one-tenth” of the amount of silver as a standard cell.

The two-pronged attack of vastly growing solar capacity and the shift to n-type technologies has converged to make silver a real pressure point for future solar manufacturing.

Solar manufacturer Qcells has partnered with Lumet, a specialist in solar cell metallisation technology, to reduce the cost of its cell production lines.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) will invest AU$11 million (US$6.9 million) in Australian solar technology company SunDrive Solar to support the commercial scale-up of SunDrive’s novel solar cell metallisation technology.

PV Tech speaks to Xinyu Zhang, R&D director at JinkoSolar, to discuss the company's approach to all things n-type, including TOPCon, IBC and tandem cell technologies.

Fraunhofer ISE in collaboration with industrial partners have developed a fine-line metallisation process to create contact fingers with a width of 19µm and a height of 18µm in a single printing step that is almost invisible to the naked eye.

Major PV materials firm, Heraeus Photovoltaics is establishing fully-equipped ‘Innovation Centers’ in Shanghai and Singapore for new product development and customer specific modifications for monocrystalline and multicrystalline solar cells.