SUPERGEN - PV Materials for the 21st Century

Completed

Renewable Energy Sources(Solar Energy, Photovoltaics)

Basic and strategic applied research

PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS (Chemistry)
PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS (Physics)
ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Electrical and Electronic Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting

Dr K Durose
Stephenson Institute for Renewable Energy
University of Liverpool

Standard

EPSRC

01 April 2004

31 March 2008

48 months

£5,544,750

Energy

North West

Energy -- Energy Research Capacity

Dr K Durose, Stephenson Institute for Renewable Energy, University of Liverpool

Dr D Bagnall, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton
Dr M Boreland, Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Loughborough University
Dr I Forbes, Sch of Engineering & Technology, Northumbria University
Professor S Irvine, Centre for Solar Energy Research, Swansea University
Professor LM Peter, Chemistry, University of Bath

Project Contact, Crystalox Limited
Project Contact, Millbrook Instruments Ltd
Project Contact, Oxford Lasers Ltd
Project Contact, Kurt J Lesker Co Ltd
Project Contact, BP Solar Ltd
Project Contact, SAFC Hitech
Project Contact, Gatan
Project Contact, MATS (UK) Ltd

PV-Supergen is a consortium of six partners, brought together by EPSRC, to establish a world class capability in advanced wafer silicon and thin film PV devices. This proposal sets out a four year project that will achieve a high degree of integration between the academic consortium members and 8 industrial partners. The ethos of this proposal has been to combine the best expertise of each partner to, have a holistic capability in each of the main PV material systems: silicon, cadmium tellurideand the copper indium diselenide family of materials. Through this approach the PV-Supergen consortium is seeking added value through team working to provide technology platforms for demonstrating state of the art devices and to effectively test new ideas. To achieve this we need to have excellent characterisation capability and to seek improvements in device performance that are knowledge led. It is anticipated that step changes in performance, demonstrated in the laboratory, would be morereadily translated into PV module manufacture if detailed characterisation is known of the structural, optical and electronic properties of the materials and devices. PV-Supergen will provide a path for substantial cost reduction (cost/Wp) in PV module manufacture through enabling lower cost processing, lower cost materials (thin film technology) while making improvements in cell conversion efficiency and stability

01/01/07