“We are very proud of what we have done,” commented Marisa Di Sabatino of SINTEF Materials and Chemistry. “Many people before us have been working on solar energy, but our results are actually quite important.”
“We started out from metallic silicon that contains around one per cent impurities – which is not good enough for use in solar cells. We attempted both to reduce the impurities in the metallic silicon and to cut down the amount of impurities that are already in the raw material by means of heat treatment, for example,” she added.
The team also shortened the long production time of solar cells by using a special smelter and kiln that removed traces of carbon. They did this by using a pure carbon that contaminated silicon much less than coke or coal.
The sun business
Meet a Role Model working to make cheaper and hardier solar cells.
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Date Published: November 02, 2009
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