NEWS OF THE WEEK
SOLAR CELLS GET CHEMISTRY HELP
WIP-RENEWABLE ENERGIES
Conference-goers check out solar panels.
PHOTOVOLTAICS: Chemical makers
see efficiency opportunity
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HE EUROPEAN Photovoltaic Solar Energy Con-
ference, held last week in Hamburg, Germany, attracted 40,000 visitors with agendas spanning the solar-energy spectrum. But for the chemical industry representatives who attended, just two key words mattered: cost and efficiency. At the event, chemical companies unveiled new alliances and new products intended to reduce the cost— and raise the efficiency—of photovoltaic panels made of crystalline silicon or thin-film materials. DuPont and Applied Materials, a maker of equipment used to fabricate solar panels, announced a collaboration to increase the efficiency of crystalline silicon panels. The firms intend to combine DuPont’s Solamet metallization pastes with Applied Materials’ screen-printing technology to print circuits on solar cells with greater electrical conductivity and smaller grid-line shadows. Similarly, Merck KGaA and Germany’s Schiller Automation linked to build a pilot production line demon-
PROGRESS, BUT NO BREAKTHROUGHS CLIMATE-CHANGE SUMMIT: U.S., China endorse Copenhagen talks
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largest emitters of greenhouse gases at last week’s United Nations Summit on Climate Change. The presidents of China and the U.S., the two countries that together are responsible for about half of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, voiced support for a new climate-change treaty. But the presidents stopped short of specific proposals that could break an impasse in talks on that accord. Those negotiations are supposed to come to completion in December at a meeting in Copenhagen. The talks, however, are stymied over whether major developing countries should take on binding emission controls and over the level of financing the industrialized world should provide to help all developing nations adopt greener energy technologies. Chinese President Hu Jintao offered the most substantial plan of action. He pledged J. ANGELILLO/POOL-CNP-PHOTOLINK/NEWSCOM
Obama (left) shakes hands with Hu after the UN Summit on Climate Change on Sept. 22.
LL EYES WERE ON the leaders of the world’s
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strating a new means of silicon-wafer-edge isolation, an etching process that creates the active solar-cell areas. The line uses Merck’s Isishape etching paste, which yields panels that are more efficient than those made with laseror wet-chemistry-based etchants, claimed Ingo Köhler, head of R&D for Merck’s structuring solutions business. Improving solar-cell encapsulating materials was a common theme at the conference. Arkema, a French industrial chemicals firm, unveiled Apolhya Solar, a nanostructured polymer that it touts as an improvement over other encapsulation plastics. The new polymer requires no curing, Arkema said, thus saving time during production and simplifying end-of-life recycling. Wacker Chemie, a leading producer of crystalline silicon for solar-cell fabrication, also supplies encapsulation polymers. At the solar conference, the German company introduced Tectosil, an organosilicone encapsulant that it said can be processed quickly, inexpensively, and without curing. The materials and equipment companies exhibiting at the conference expressed confidence that their products would enable efficient solar cells to be made at low cost. In a presentation, Mark R. Pinto, Applied Materials’ chief technology officer, predicted that, by 2012, the typical crystalline-silicon-cell factory will have doubled output to more than 3,000 wafers per hour. And the wafers’ solar conversion efficiency will be 20%, up from 16% today.—MICHAEL MCCOY
that China will ratchet down its emissions of CO2 per unit of gross domestic product—a measure called CO2 intensity. By 2020, China will cut its CO2 intensity “by a notable margin” when compared with 2005 levels, Hu pledged. To meet this goal, China will develop nuclear and renewable energy sources, Hu said, so that they supply 15% of the country’s energy consumption by 2020. Even with this effort, however, China’s gross CO2 output is expected to rise as the world’s most populous country continues to develop rapidly. Nonetheless, Hu’s announcement “is significant and shows China’s seriousness about acting on climate change,” says Jennifer Morgan, climate program director for the think tank World Resources Institute. President Barack Obama reaffirmed the U.S.’s commitment to tackling climate change and called for countries to be “flexible and pragmatic” in the Copenhagen talks. Negotiations could remain tough, he suggested. “It’s a journey that will require each of us to persevere through setbacks and fight for every inch of progress, even when it comes in fits and starts,” he said. Also at the summit, Mohamed Nasheed, president of the Maldives, a nation of low-lying atolls in the Indian Ocean, made an impassioned plea for the world to finish a new climate treaty. Noting that his country faces obliteration if sea levels rise because of global warming, Nasheed said: “We cannot make Copenhagen a pact for suicide.”—CHERYL HOGUE
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009
