Mass Production of Photovoltaic Modules: Low Cost Fabrication, Performance and Potential

摘要

A manufacturing technology has been developed in our laboratory using cadmium telluride (CdTe). It is noted that CdTe PV technology uses up to 100 times less semiconductor material than c-Si. Further, the purity requirement for CdTe is 100 times less than for c-Si. The technology uses a unique large-area vapor source for coating, and large-area glass substrate heaters for producing PV modules of CdTe on glass substrates. The technology allows all semiconductor processing steps to be performed in one vacuum chamber without breaking vacuum, improving throughput, film quality, device efficiency, device stability, and yield, while avoiding pinhole formation. The cycle time is two minutes. Currently modules of size 2 ft × 4 ft. are manufactured commercially with this technology by Abound Solar in a factory with a capacity of 200 MW/Yr. The cost of modules (～12% efficient) can be less than $1/ watt. The energy payback time (EPBT) is less than one year.