
So long, silicon: Researchers create solar panels from cheap copper oxide - maxko87
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/134305-so-long-silicon-researchers-create-solar-panels-from-cheap-copper-oxide?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=so-long-silicon-researchers-create-solar-panels-from-cheap-copper-oxide
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alecdibble
The takeaway from this article is that they came up for a technique to use
cheaper materials instead of silicon. This is significant because silicon is
very expensive and every increasing demand is also increasing the prices of it
at a very fast rate. I took a class on CMOS Digital Design where the professor
went over manufacturing overhead for a processor. The cost of the silicon
alone was astounding, not even taking into account all the other overhead that
comes with the process.

Unfortunately, like a lot of other research in this field, its real world
applicability may be relatively limited. One of the reasons for this is that
so much time, money, and infrastructure has been put into modern silicon
semiconductor manufacturing that no one really wants to touch anything else.
It could mean starting from scratch and requiring massive amounts of R&D and
process planning to break even.

The real breakthroughs come when someone keeps the existing silicon process in
mind and makes discoveries that use the existing infrastructure. That's the
kind of research that really "changes" things.

If someone could come up with a manufacturing system that was cheap and easy
to swap out or modify the process, they could literally change technology as
we know it. If you could have the capability to scale processes easily, a lot
of the really cool and cutting-edge research could get implemented on a large
scale.

EDIT: I graduated as an electrical engineer and have taken several clean room
processing classes, in case you were wondering.

~~~
revelation
From what I've learned, silicon is abundant in the earth crust. The problem is
that you need a very very high purity to make useful wafers. So technically,
its not a problem of scarcity, just a lack of miners producing it in a very
pure form, which could be solved by having more of them.

Are there some other difficulties that I'm overlooking?

~~~
alecdibble
It's expensive to manufacture silicon at semiconductor quality, even when
talking about polycrystalline wafers. (Monocrystalline wafers, used for
"chips", is even more expensive and prone to defect." People are increasing
production of polycrystalline silicon wafers but the demand is much greater
than the supply, even with this increase. The cycle basically goes like this:
polycrystalline gets more expensive because of demand -> supply increases ->
prices go down (in theory) -> demand increases -> polycrystalline gets
expensive again.

This is an endless loop right now, as the total amount of possible demand is
>> than the growth of polycrystalline foundries. Furthermore, LCD displays
also use this form of polycrystalline silicon, which doesn't help with the
demand problem. Decently-graded silicon is inherently expensive to manufacture
because of the process involved.

The takeaway is that if these metal-oxides are cheaper to produce, even if
they are more expensive for the raw material, the cost savings would carry
over to the products. Equally relevant when talking about solar cells is how
much energy is needed to produce the cells themselves. Right now, an enormous
amount of energy is required for silicon solar cells. Helping the energy
crisis doesn't help if something takes that much energy to produce. (I do not
know the ratio of lifetime energy output versus energy to manufacture but I am
sure it's not very good.)

~~~
yessql
Again, you have this 180 degrees backwards. There was a huge rush to build out
polysilicon module fabs in China that has caused a huge oversupply. Now module
manufacturers are going out of business daily, leaving an oversupply of
polysilicon capacity.

Here, from a few days ago:

[http://www.pv-
tech.org/news/polysilicon_headwinds_unchanged_...](http://www.pv-
tech.org/news/polysilicon_headwinds_unchanged_at_hemlock)

~~~
alecdibble
That's really interesting. The industry is in a different place compared to
when I was familiar with it.

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forgotAgain
Source article (not so breathless and a more reasonable title):
[http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/08/discovery-opens-
door-...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/08/discovery-opens-door-to-
cheaper-solar-panels/)

~~~
andrewflnr
And no OnSwipe, either, thanks.

------
debacle
Disclaimer: I am not a physicist, and most of this is from memory relating to
DIY experiments ~2 years ago.

* Copper oxide panels are not new.

* They are much less efficient than silicon panels.

* Cu2O is much more expensive than silicon.

~~~
caladan
That's what I thought as well. Silicon is basically.... well, sand, isn't it?

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Going from sand to pure polysilicon is extremely energy-intensive and
expensive.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
It's not terribly energy intensive. You want to see energy intensive, pick up
a beer can. Aluminum is electricity in solid form.

Silicon is capital equipment intensive. It is processed in batches. While each
batch is being processed, it ties up an expensive processing station for a
long time.

~~~
mchannon
1 pound of metallurgical grade silicon takes about 1 pound of coal and 1 pound
of wood chips.

1 pound of polysilicon takes about 2 pounds of metallurgical grade and even
more energy.

1 pound of wafer takes about 2 pounds of polysilicon and even more energy.

Aluminum probably doesn't take as much energy but the difference is Silicon's
energy is cheap (coal and wood chips for the first step).

~~~
Joakal
Isn't the reason that silicon is cheap to process is because there are high-
silicon sands at Silicon Valley and other places?

By the way, would a solar furnace be feasible to replace your first step,
eliminating CO2 result?

~~~
mchannon
I'm sure you didn't mean it as such, but that's actually kinda funny; no,
Silicon Valley did not get its name from the manufacture of Silicon from sand.
Most of the sand that is sourced to make your microchips and solar cells comes
from quartz mines and sand pits in Appalachia; Alabama, SE Ohio, and West
Virginia are probably the top producers. Silicon Valley imports wafers and has
historically had very little to do with how those wafers got made.

In fact, according to the foreman at one of said plants I talked to, they use
pieces of quartzite that are more like pebbles than sand; no point in crushing
it further I guess.

The function of the carbon is not just to create the heat but also to give the
oxygen some way to remove itself. In fact, I believe the oxygen would still
rather bond to silicon than carbon but the carbon is able to pull enough
physically away as gas to make the reaction work. The resultant gas is mostly
CO, carbon monoxide, which somehow becomes CO2 after the plant's done with it.

------
msds
This article is really very wrong about conventional solar cell manufacture -
especially the "Almost every solar panel..." paragraph. Here's a decent
resource on standard manufacturing technology:
<http://pveducation.org/pvcdrom>

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geogra4
How about we mine mars to make solar panels from Iron Oxide? Or bring machines
to mars that will build solar panels?

Then we could have an entire electrical power source for human habitation or
machine experiments.

~~~
archgoon
As it stands, we have not yet built a factory using exclusively robots. I'm
sure that this would have very useful applications on Earth, as well as on
Mars, if you were interested in tackling it :).

~~~
Joakal
If you want to start somewhere: <http://phys.org/news/2010-12-sahara-aims-
power-world.html>

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Shivetya
I found the picture humorous, reminded me of so many post holocaust games,
unfortunately it also reminded me of some cities I passed through that border
the Ohio river.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Post-apocalypse, not post-Holocaust

~~~
zellyn
"a great or complete devastation or destruction, especially by fire" - sgtm

~~~
Stefan_H
I'm glad I'm not the only one who has to do something when someone corrects a
person, but is wrong themselves. One of my BIGGEST pet peeves!

~~~
andrewflnr
I would still bet the OP actually meant apocalypse, even if their mistake
turned out sorta correct. "Post-holocaust" is a rare usage.

