International Solar Electric Technology (iset)

Brookhaven Technology Group, Inc. is a Setauket, NY based company that has received a grant(s) from the Department of Energy's SBIR/STTR program. The abstract(s) for these grant award(s) are provided as well since they provide insights into Brookhaven Technology Group, Inc.'s business and areas of expertise. Nanotubes made of carbon structures will be cross-linked and woven into self-supporting structures for use as charge-exchange foils. These foils are essential for operation of many accelerator applications. The research will lead to increased performance and reduced cost of operation of accelerators used in medicine, Homeland Security, and high energy physics research.

Supercon is a company that received a SBIR Phase II grant for a project entitled: A New Production Method for Ta Fibers for Use in Electrolytic Capacitors with Improved Performance and Packaging Options. Their project is intended to develop a new process for manufacturing tantalum (Ta) metal fibers for use in producing tantalum capacitors, and advance this process to the stage of commercialization. This technology, which has been demonstrated in Phase I, could lead to capacitor products having higher performance and greater volumetric efficiency than any currently available. The use of fibers in place of metal powder allows the production of thin anode bodies leading to improved packing options and component performance. The innovation underlying the technology is bundle drawing of Ta filaments in a copper matrix. A composite consisting of Ta filaments in a copper matrix is drawn is a series of reduction steps until the filaments are less than about 10 microns in diameter. The drawn wire is rolled to produce ribbon-type filaments that are 1 micron or less in thickness. The copper composite matrix is chemically dissolved without attacking the Ta to produce metallic Ta high surface area, ribbon-fibers. The fibers are formed into thin mats, which are sintered to produce porous metal strips from which high surface area capacitor anodes are made. A significant aspect of this approach is that fiber morphology can be varied over a wide of fiber thicknesses unlike powder. This allows the morphology of the fibers to be optimized for the particular voltage rating and use requirements in order to maximize the performance of the capacitor. Commercially, nearly all medical, automotive, military and many consumer electronic devices utilize Ta electrolytic capacitors due to their outstanding performance, reliability and volumetric efficiency. Solid electrolytic capacitors are currently made from Ta metal powder. Several million pounds per year of Ta powder are consumed in manufacturing Ta capacitors for these applications. The trend in electronics is toward high powder components and increased miniaturization. Combined with the need to lower materials and manufacturing costs, these considerations have created an opportunity for new method of producing solid electrolytic capacitors. Fiber metal technology has the potential to both lower manufacturing costs, improve capacitor performance, and improve packaging options, which could enable the development of new product that are either currently very difficult or very expensive to make using current technology base on metal powder. Supercon is a company that received a SBIR Phase I grant for a project entitled: A New Production Method for Ta Fibers for Use in Electrolytic Capacitors with Improved Performance and Packaging Options. Their project is intended to demonstrate a new process for manufacturing valve metal fibers for use in producing capacitors. The technology is applicable to all valve metals used for making solid electrolytic capacitors. If successful, this technology could lead to capacitor products having higher performance and greater volumetric efficiency than are currently available. The use of fibers in place of the standard powder compacts allows the production of thin anode bodies leading to improved packaging options and component performance. The innovation underlying the technology is bundle drawing of valve metal filaments contained in copper matrix. A composite consisting of valve metal filaments in a copper matrix is drawn in series of reduction steps until the filaments are less than 10 microns. The drawn wire is rolled to produce submicron thick ribbon type filaments. The copper composite matrix is chemically dissolved to produce metallic thin fibers. The fibers are formed into thin mats, which are sintered to produce porous metal strips from which high surface area capacitor anodes can be made. A significant aspect of this approach is that fiber morphology can be varied within a wide range of thickness and widths unlike powders. This allows the morphology of the fibers to be optimized in order to maximize the properties of the capacitor. Commercially, nearly all medical, automotive and consumer electronic devices all utilize solid electrolytic capacitors due to their performance, volumetric efficiency, and high reliability. Several million pounds per year of powder are consumed in the manufacture of capacitors for these applications. The trend towards higher power components, and miniaturization, combined with the need to lower materials and manufacturing costs have created an opportunity for new methods of producing solid electrolytic capacitors. Fiber metal technology has the potential to both lower manufacturing costs, improve capacitor performance, and improve packaging options which could lead to new products that are either very difficult or very expensive to make using current methods.

Zt Solar is a company that received a SBIR Phase II grant for a project entitled: An Omni-Directional Antireflective Coating from Solutions. Their seeks to develop a surface texturing technique that will significantly improve sunlight coupling into various types of solar cells. Surface textures are mandatory to record efficiencies in solar cells. The Omni-Directional Antireflective Coating (Omni-AR) solution showed a reduction in reflection in a large range of incident angles (omni-directional) over a broad spectral range (400-1200 nm). Improved solar cell efficiency of over 10% was demonstrated (experimentally). The broader impact/commercial potential of this project will be a low-cost, broad-spectrum, omni-directional and substrate-independent surface texture antireflective coating. It is expected to have a significant impact on current and future solar cell technologies. The ability to provide near ideal performance of antireflective coatings to solar cells without a vacuum process is a major step in reducing the cost of solar electricity. This solution-based deposition technique makes it possible to provide a single coating technology that should work with all types of solar cell materials and structures. This project will significantly improve the conversion efficiency in both current and future solar cells (~10%) with a minimum cost increase (~4%). "This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)." Zt Solar is a company that received a SBIR Phase I grant for a project entitled: An Omni-Directional Antireflective Coating from Solutions. Their project will develop a novel Omni-Directional Antireflective Coating (Omni-AR) to improve light collection in photovoltaic cells. The coating consists of a monolayer of microscale silica particles partially immersed into a film of spin-on glass. Its antireflection is broad spectrum and less dependent on sunlight incident angle, thus omni-directional. More importantly, the coating is prepared from solutions, ensuring its low cost. The research activities include 1) development of coating processes which allow large-area, uniform and close-packed coating of solar cells with monolayer silica particles; 2) optical simulation to optimize the designs of Omni-AR coatings and 3) testing of commercial polycrystalline silicon solar cells with Omni-AR coatings. Except anisotropically-etched pyramids on single-crystalline silicon, there is currently no cost effective method to produce surface texture on any other types of solar cells. Through this project, the technical feasibility and commercial potential of Omni-AR will be demonstrated. Such a low-cost, broad-spectrum, omni-directional and substrate-independent AR coating will have a significant impact on current and future solar cell technologies, including polycrystalline silicon, amorphous silicon, ribbon silicon, copper indium diselenide, cadmium telluride and organic semiconductors, by significantly improving their efficiency with a minimum cost increase. These solar cells currently have ~60% of the solar cell market.

Intrigue Technologies is a company focused on electronic product design within the technology industry. The company offers services in hardware and software design, product development, and strategy management, with a particular emphasis on embedded Linux, high speed hardware design, firmware, networking, signal/image processing algorithms, UI/UX development, and web technologies. Intrigue Technologies primarily serves the technology and robotics industries. It is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

M V Systems is a company that received a SBIR Phase II grant for a project entitled: Fabrication of Low-bandgap Nano-crystalline SiGeC Thin Films Using the Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) Technique. Their their award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 project is to develop thin film tandem solar cells, comprising of nanocrystalline silicon and silicon carbon (nc-Si and nc-Si:C) absorber materials, with a conversion efficiency of ~20%. The phase I project successfully developed one of the key components, i.e. intrinsic nc-Si:C with a band gap, Eg, of ~ 1.5 eV and with good opto-electronic properties. This key material will be used initially in phase II to fabricate cells in a single junction configuration with an efficiency goal of ~10%. Previously, developed "device quality" nc-Si materials, with Eg ~1.1eV, were used to produce solar cells with efficiency ~8%. Integrating the two devices in a tandem junction configuration is forecast to yield efficiencies of ~18%. Further improvement in the tandem junction device efficiency,to ~20%, may be achieved via the use of buffer layers at the p/i or i/n interfaces and by increasing the grain size which would boost the open circuit voltage, Voc. Higher efficiency thin film tandem solar cells will be critical to achieving the low costs necessary to achieve widespread adoption of photovoltaic energy generating systems. M V Systems is a company that received a SBIR Phase I grant for a project entitled: Fabrication of low-bandgap nano-crystalline SiGeC thin films using the Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) technique. Their project will develop nanocrystalline SiGeC thin films with an optical bandgap (Eg) in the range of 1.6-1.8 eV, and enhanced absorption characteristics, leading to low-cost, high-efficiency (>20%) photovoltaic devices. Previous attempts at improving the photovoltaic efficiency have not been consistent and successful. The proposed approach uses plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) technique to deposit these films, which allows greater control of the process by being able to manipulate the plasma and electron temperatures to control the ion density in the plasma, with an independent control of the process parameters. This flexibility does not exist in the currently used techniques. With the proposed technique, stable and consistent films of SiGeC can be deposited on the desired substrate at moderate temperatures. If successfully developed, this technique could provide higher efficiency solar cells for the alternative energy market. The goal of highly stable films, high deposition efficiency and process scalability for large-scale manufacturing can only be achieved if the basic process can be proven. The broader impacts of this research will be in the low-cost photovoltaic (PV) devices for power generation market. If successfully completed, this research could lead to a strong partnership between solar cell manufacturers and equipment manufacturers, leading to a potentially lucrative photovoltaics market. Currently, electricity generated with available PV devices is 3-4 times more expensive as the conventional electricity. The selected materials (Si, Ge and C) for the thin film are abundantly available, which can significantly reduce the raw materials costs. A large body of basic knowledge of the requirements of solar electricity for the competitive market already exists, which makes the development of the process with a realistic performance target easy to achieve. The main challenge for achieving this goal lies in being able to control the deposition process to assure a stable and robust process, as the previous work has not been able to achieve consistent results. The initial target of producing a triple-junction thin-film solar cell is a worthy first product demonstration, which will prove the efficacy of the proposed technique, and attract third-party funding with little difficulty.

Ultrasonic Technologies is a company that received a SBIR Phase I grant for a project entitled: Resonance Ultrasonic Vibrations for Defect Characterization in Solar Silicon Wafers. Their Phase I research project addresses fundamentals of the innovative experimental methodology for quick and accurate assessment of mechanical defects in solar-grade full-size (up to 210 mm) silicon (Si) wafers. The objective is to justify a commercial prototype of the Resonance Ultrasonic Vibrations (RUV) system which ultimately will be used as a real-time in-line process control tool for identification and rejection from a solar cell production line of mechanically unstable, i.e. fragile wafers due to periphery cracks and high level of residual stress. The broader impact of the program will be in the commercialization of the RUV system to address critical needs of the photovoltaic (PV) industry. The world-wide PV market exhibits a steady yearly up to 40% growth rate in recent years. There is potential for applying this approach to other technologies, such as stress monitoring in Silicon-on isolator wafers and SiGe epitaxial layers in high-speed electronics and adhesion quality assessment in thin polycrystalline Si films on glass for flat panel displays.