Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

Sunlight will be the largest energy source in the near future when we run out the fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas etc. More energy from the sun strikes the earth in one hour (4.3 ? 10^20 J, to heat 1 g of water 1 °C up, we need 4.18 J) than all the energy consumed on the earth in one year (4.1 ? 10^20 J). We currently exploit this solar resource through solar electricity converted by photovoltaic (PV) or solar cells we are making in this project. However, the bottleneck of the adoption of solar energy is the low efficiency (20% as maximum) of the solar cells, devices that absorb the sunlight and convert it to electricity, and high manufacturing cost of these cells. In Canada, there are many solar panel installation companies, depending on importation of single PV cells that are the smallest unit for photoelectric conversion. Only a few can be found, on single cell development that is the most important in emerging sources of renewable energy. This proposal requests an atomic layer deposition (ALD) system for making thin film PV cells for renewable energy from the sun, using rich chemical elements in Canada such as Copper, Zinc, Indium, Selenium and sulphur. The depositor will be used to make other layers on top of our efficient sunlight absorber layer to complete the devices. This project extends our patent-pending technologies of low-temperature one-pot fabrication of sunlight absorber materials to the best performance and at lowest cost devices. The PV cells to be fabricated by the requested ALD system are expected to generate greater than 14% solar energy. The system can be also used for our proposed Li battery study. The project will lead to the following benefits to Canada: (a) wealth creation including new start-ups to produce the PV products; (b) high quality personnel with expertise on this exciting research and development area; and (c) cleaner energy, better environments and healthier population.