News Article
Cyrium licenses dilute nitrides
Companies with potentially revolutionary cell designs like the UK’s Quantasol and Canada’s Cyrium are claiming their slice of CPV revenues.
Quantasol in particular marked out its intentions by revealing that it has licensed dilute nitride patents for triplejunction cell production. The crystal growth processes developed at the University of Houston should make cell manufacturing cheaper and simpler and improve efficiency, Quantasol says. Previously unexploited in IIIV solar, dilute nitrides will allow each junction of the cell to be made with fewer quantum wells. With Quantasol’s approach delivering the world record for a singlejunction cell in June, the industry will anticipate what it can do with triple-junction designs. Finance for solar projects remains tight, and Solar Systems’ woes look like they could be a real setback to any hopes of proving the viability of CPV on a large scale. The EU Joint Research Center’s Institute for Energy recent report suggests that just 17 MW of CPV power plants are currently installed worldwide, with 10 MW alone deployed in 2008. It offers hope with predictions that 30 MW will be installed in 2009 and 100 MW in 2010. It would not be surprising if the increasing numbers of III-V cell suppliers have to cut their prices.
