Natcore picks contractor to build 1st black silicon solar cell machine

Dec 4, 2012 - US high technology manufacturing equipment maker MicroTech Systems Inc has been chosen to build for US solar cell maker Natcore Technology (CVE:NXT) a solar cell processing station, upgraded to make black silicon wafers.

In a statement on Tuesday Natcore, which has been working on the black solar silicon technology in partnership with the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), said that the second-generation AR-Box processing solution prototype would be finished in the first three months of 2013. The semi-automated machine has been tailored to make black silicon solar cell wafers in a pilot line role in existing cell factories, the inventor noted.

The deal with MicroTech grants the manufacturing contractor a licence to sell the AR-Box to solar cell makers in North America.
Natcore said it was waiting for successful results from its testing activities to proceed to the sale of the upgraded machine to its first customer.

Near the end of October the solar technology firm said it had produced the first black silicon solar cell through a process suitable for mass production. Natcore used its scalable liquid phase deposition (LPD) process.

Solar power equipment made from black silicon is estimated to generate more energy a day that a conventional solar panel, as the reflection of black silicon is far lower. In addition, the angular dependence of the reflectance from black silicon is also significantly lower, which bolsters a black silicon panel's output in the morning and afternoon when the sun hits at an angle. Minimum reflectivity in solar cells is crucial as all reflected light is actually wasted. The reflectivity of a polished silicon wafer surface approaches 40% and it could be lowered to 6% through the addition of antireflective coating. Still, the black silicon process has been proven to cut average reflectivity to below 1.5%.

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