G24 Innovations

FTL Solar's patent-pending products include pre-fabricated, mass produced photovoltaic (PV) tensile structures. The structures integrate thin film PV with super strength fabric with the aim of creating architecturally refined solar canopies, arrays and enclosures that turn sunlight into electricity.

Primestar Solar is a company that received a SBIR Phase I grant for a project entitled: High Quality, Low Cost, Polycrystalline CdS/CdTe Photovoltaic Cells. Their will develop new processes for producing lower cost and higher quality thin films from the compound semiconductors CdS and CdTe. These will be used to more inexpensively produce high performance photovoltaic modules that generate electricity from sunlight. Thin film CdTe-based photovoltaics currently require a post-deposition CdCl2 treatment and anneal to achieve reasonable performance. This anneal is known to increase the grain size in some films and increase the minority carrier lifetime in all CdTe films. The minority carrier lifetime is generally correlated with device efficiency in photovoltaic cells. However, the CdCl2 anneal cannot be optimized to maximize the minority carrier lifetime because attempts to do so have caused film delamination. Film delamination occurs due to strain induced during the anneal at the interface between the film and the glass substrate. This proposal seeks to develop a film deposition process that simultaneously avoids this problem and makes better quality films. This process will foster large grain growth, defect passivation, and grain boundary passivation while eliminating the need for a post-deposition CdCl2 treatment and anneal. This will result in higher efficiency solar cells and a streamlined production process. Commercially, solar photovoltaic modules are a silent, pollution free means to generate electricity from sunlight. Once the capital investment is made to install a photovoltaic electricity system, its operating cost is essentially zero because its "fuel", sunlight, is free. Photovoltaic electricity provides a means for homes to generate as much energy as they use over the course of a year. The production of photovoltaic modules has been increasing 20-30% annually for the past decade due to increases in efficiency and reductions in cost. However, for photovoltaics to achieve significant market penetration into mainstream electricity generation, this growth rate must be continued. This requires further increases in module efficiency and reductions in module cost. This research proposal addresses both of these issues. Successful development of this technology will ensure the marketplace success of CdTe photovoltaic modules, and pave the way for widespread stable-priced, sustainable, pollution-free electricity generation.

THINKFLEX SOLAR combines the most advantageous characteristic of the two current photovoltaic technologies. The company's modules provide the efficiency of silicon cells and the flexibility of thin film systems through the company's technology and assembly methods. The results are high power output, long lifetime and reliable modules. To simplify installation and transportation these products can be customized in size and shape. The company's products are light weight with favourable aesthetics that are easily adaptable to enhance the creation of new and green designs.

Jem Enterprises is a company that received a SBIR Phase I grant for a project entitled: Tin(II) Sulfide Photovoltaics. Their project aims to develop photovoltaic devices based on tin (II) sulfide (SnS). The properties of SnS, including bandgaps, carrier density and mobility, chemical and thermal stability, and metallurgical properties, promise the possibility to achieve relatively high conversion efficiency given state-of-art process control and device design. In this project, close space sublimation (CSS) technique, a thin film fabrication method proven for low cost and high manufacturability, will be used to synthesize SnS. The broader/commercial impact of this project will be the potential to produce photovoltaic devices based on low-cost and environmentally-friendly materials. There is no doubt that solar electricity has attracted a lot of attention in recent years as an alternative and renewable energy source. However, most of the current solar cell technologies have one or more of the following issues that, (1) raw materials are not abundantly available; (2) toxic materials are used; (3) overall cost is high. This project will address these issues by developing photovoltaic devices using SnS, a semiconductor material that can be supplied on a massive scale and at low recovery costs.

PhotoVolt, Inc. was founded in 1994 by Bernard Sater, a former NASA Glenn Research Center scientist and inventor, with a vision to enable high intensity photovoltaic ("PV"‚) concentrator systems to achieve lower cost per watt than is possible with conventional photovoltaic technologies. PhotoVolt's cell technology has the potential for making PV power systems economically viable for widespread application and cost competitive with conventional fuels in large-scale global markets. Over the past 14 years, with the support of NASA Glenn Research Center , and the late Dr. Chandra Goradia, a renowned PV researcher at Cleveland State University, with US Department of Energy grants, Mr. Sater successfully proved the promise of his invention and introduced it to the market as a commercial product. In 2007, PhotoVolt management decided to accelerate development of the high intensity concentrator market by forming a new company called GreenField Steam & Electric Co. to develop and commercialize concentrator PV systems utilizing PhotoVolt's cell technology. The new company successfully raised seed money, developed a new concentrator design, made first sales, and secured the IP by filing for many patents. The Company aiming to bring to market a high intensity concentrating PV system named StarGen a solution that is ideally suited to leverage the strengths of the PhotoVolt cell, while delivering "free"‚ thermal energy . This system is designed to make maximum use of off-the-shelf components and materials, holding the promise to produce solar energy at lower price points. In 2008, PhotoVolt, Inc. and GreenField Steam & Electric Co. agreed to merge, becoming GreenField Solar The Company, based near Cleveland Ohio, USA, intends to license its technology in the future. Management is working to raise additional capital to scale up production capacity in 2009 and beyond.

Gratings Incorporated is a company that received a STTR Phase I grant for a project entitled: High Efficiency Thin-film Photovoltaics on Low-cost Substrates by Layer Transfer. Their their award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and their project will apply high aspect ratio, nm-scale, columnar, and crystalline Si structures as templates for high-quality growth of thin-film GaAs solar cells on low-cost flexible substrates. Sub-10-nm Si seed layers are expected to facilitate growth of low-defect density GaAs films. The aspect ratio of nm-scale structures also serve as sacrificial layers for removal of completed GaAs solar cell. Epitaxial growth and characterization of GaAs films on nm-scale Si structures will be carried out at the Center for High Technology at the University of New Mexico. Successful phase I STTR research will lead to commercialization of high (~ 20 %) efficient, flexible solar cells for applications in a wide range of terrestrial and space environments. Multiple substrate re-use and inherent large area processing capability of Si will result in significant cost reductions. High quality heteroepitaxial GaAs growth on Si has been a subject of intense research. Due to its direct bandgap, GaAs is attractive for a number of optoelectronics applications and its integration with Si-based microelectronics has been a cherished goal. The lattice and thermal expansion mismatches with Si make it difficult to grow good device quality layers. We have recently demonstrated as the Si seed dimension is reduced below 100 nm dimensions, the quality of heteroepitaxial growth increases rapidly. The nm-scale Si structures are formed using low-cost, large area methods based on conventional integrated circuit processing methods. Successful research effort will lead to reduction in PV generation costs, and enhanced applicability of thin-film PV in terrestrial and space environments because in contrast with competing thin-film solar cells, GaAs thin-film solar cells will not suffer from light-induced performance degradation.