TetraSun has announced the completion of its SunShot Initiative PV Incubator grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). According to TetraSun, all deliverables under the contract – which included a full area cell efficiency of a minimum of 20% and reliability tests according to IEC 61215 – were submitted ahead of schedule and certified by the DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
TetraSun's cell concept is based on a new surface passivation technology that enables the use of 50-um-wide copper electrodes instead of screen-printed silver metallization. Without demanding special equipment for the manufacturing process, cell Voc values in excess of 700 mV are achieved on monocrystalline Czochralski grown silicon, according to the company.
‘Exceeding the performance of traditional heterojunction technology on 156mm cells – without the need for a transparent conductive oxide or special module assembly – is a significant advantage when it comes to high-volume manufacturing of the TetraCell," says Dr. Oliver Schultz-Wittmann, vice president of device engineering at TetraSun.
In 2010, TetraSun received a $2.3 million grant from the DOE to support the development of back-surface passivation research and development.
