Greentech Lead Middle East: Intermolecular, accelerating
research and development (R&D) for semiconductor and clean energy
industries, announced that it is cooperating with King Abdullah University of
Science and Technology (KAUST) for the enhancement of
copper-indium-gallium-diselenide (CIGS) thin film photovoltaic (PV)
manufacturing technology.
The advanced metrology capabilities of the Solar and
Photovoltaics Engineering Research Center (SPERC) at KAUST in Thuwal, Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia, are used along with Intermolecular’s High Productivity
Combinatorial (HPC) platform in San Jose to rapidly learn about high efficiency
CIGS solar cell materials and process interdependencies.
“Working with Intermolecular’s team and HPC platform
allows us to accelerate our mission of developing sustainable solar
power,”
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is focusing enormous
resources on developing renewable energy technologies as part of the strategy
to transform its fossil fuel-based economy in the coming decades. KAUST is at
the forefront of this effort and sees CIGS technology as extremely promising in
terms of its potential to deliver the lowest cost solar electricity in the
Kingdom,” said Ghassan Jabbour, director of SPERC at KAUST.
The joint IMI-KAUST project is led by research scientist
Jessica Eid, hosted at Intermolecular’s facility in San Jose, CA.
“We recently reported progress on our patent pending
sulfur-free, two-step sputtered CIGS approach with fundamental manufacturing
benefits at the IEEE PV Specialists Conference (IEEE-PVSC). The breakthrough
result of 17.7 percent active-area CIGS efficiency at an open-circuit voltage
of 692mV -which we developed internally in less than one year – reaffirms the
broad applicability of our HPC platform to rapidly advance CIGS PV,” said
Sandeep Nijhawan, Intermolecular’s vice president of its Clean Energy Group.