SILICON NANODOTS FOR SOLAR CELL TANDEM

Objective

The overall objective of the project is to develop new Nanomaterials with New Production Technologies and to fabricate silicon quantum dot tandem solar cells to achieve increased efficiencies. The understanding of electrical transport and recombination mechanisms in these newly developed nanomaterials will enable us to design new tandem solar cell structures - based on Si thin-film or wafer solar cells - that help to overcome the efficiency limits of these conventional concepts. In order to reach our goals, considerable R+D work has to be performed on semiconductor bulk materials, thin layers and hetero-structures for such solar cells. These topics have not yet or only in parts been investigated and are also of high scientific interest for novel photonic and charge storage devices incorporating Si nanocrystals embedded in Si alloys. The consortium of this project, also including two companies, merges the scientific and technological competences that are necessary to find answers to these questions. Another objective is the compatibility of the newly developed technologies with high-throughput processing to ensure further cost-reduction. The expected significant jump in the solar cell and processing evolution will lead to higher efficiencies for solar cells and to ongoing cost-reduction also with a long-term perspective and will help to strengthening the European leadership in PV technologies. Thus it will also have a positive impact on the acceptance of photovoltaics by the public and by politics. Moreover, since “energy efficiency” is a big subject in the public discussion, photovoltaics will be an example of one of the highest electricity production efficiencies that have been achieved of all power generators. To sum up, we believe that this project will have a direct and positive impact on the European PV industry and its status in material science and it will contribute to the very ambitious goals of the EU commission in CO2 reduction in general.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

• engineering and technology nanotechnology nano-materials nanocrystals
• natural sciences physical sciences electromagnetism and electronics semiconductivity
• social sciences economics and business economics production economics
• natural sciences chemical sciences inorganic chemistry metalloids
• engineering and technology environmental engineering energy and fuels renewable energy solar energy photovoltaic

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

• FP7-NMP - Specific Programme "Cooperation": Nanosciences, Nanotechnologies, Materials and new Production Technologies

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

• NMP-2009-1.2-1 - Nanotechnology for harvesting energy via photovoltaic technologies

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP7-NMP-2009-SMALL-3
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

CP-FP - Small or medium-scale focused research project

Coordinator

Participants (7)