Universidad Politécnica de Madrid Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

R&D at IES

Silicon Technology

 

Crystalline silicon is the workhorse of today’s PV, having reached in industrial environments cost targets and performance levels that were unthinkable not so long ago. And there is room for further improvement, combining the research in alternatives for the capital-intensive processes of feedstock refinement and crystallization with the implementation of high efficiency solar cell structures.

The research carried out by the Instituto de Energia Solar on crystalline Silicon technology benefits from a long experience in the whole value chain, from feedstock to solar cells. It adopts an integral approach that includes the production of solar silicon, the minimization of the impact of defects in device performance, and the research in promising solar cell structures, including the integration of silicon in a tandem structure with other semiconductors to surpass the practical efficiency limit of single junction solar cells.