running scared, page-15

excuse my English in my last post, I will try and put it better.

first of all, I believe that the collaboration between the UNSW, Suntech and Silex in stages one and two of the four stage program they showed in the power point presentation may be using just the normal mono silicon wafer, stage one is Optimised conventional mono-silicon processing ≈ 17+ % Mid 2010, stage two is Advanced mono-silicon front contacts ≈ 18+ % Late 2010 , stage three is Laser enhanced mono-crystalline doped contacts ≈ 20+ % 2011, and the final stage four is Advanced device and materials technology ≈ 25+ % 2012,this last phase I believe or perhaps the last two? will use Translucent's SOI/DBR, but all of these are just on the the cell itself, and as you can see they are aiming for 25+%, this is where Suntech will finish with it's collaboration I believe.

The next phase is for Translucent /Silex/Solar Systems in my opinion, this is where they will use up down conversion, it will be applied on top of the cell developed above, this up down conversion converts those parts of the spectrum that are captured by a normal silicon cell, the up down conversion causes Photoluminescence excitation in the normal part of the spectrum used in silicon cells today, which could possibly double or more the efficiency of the cell, it could end up being a two sun cell if you like, so you see that whatever is achieved in the first cell development could possibly be doubled, i.e 25% becomes 50%, you now need to consider that these cells themselves will be used in another solar concentrator, the dishes or reflectors which could mean 500 suns or more, and this multiplies again what they achieved in the up down conversion phase, so you may get 25+% first of all then perhaps 50% to 60% efficiency with the up down conversion and then you can multiply the output of the cell at that point by the number of suns the concentrator gives, so you see, even a small increase in the first phase is multiplied not only by the second phase but also the third phase, so the small increase in the first will mean quite large difference in the final stage.

But in a write up by Solar Systems they also talk about the new solar concentrator and how it will use an intergrated manifold cooling system, I googled that and it took me to an area called optical cooling, and part of that was an effect called BEC or Bose Einstein Condensation? I will leave that part for you to investigate SITM, but if all of this comes off, it will be mind blowing, and it certainly won't look anything like todays Silicon Solar cells or thin film for that matter IMHO.