Solar Cells — Made In a Pizza Oven 518
stylemessiah writes "The winner of several Eureka Science Awards in Australia is a crafty chick who devised a way to create solar cells cheaply using a pizza oven, nail polish and an inkjet printer. This was developed to address the high cost of cells and in particular for the world's poorest regions. She wanted to give the ~2 billion people around the world who don't have electricity the gift of light and cheap energy. This could have profound (and a good profound) implications for education and health in those in the poorest regions in the world. And it all started with her parents giving her a solar energy kit when she was 10..."
crafty chick? (Score:0, Informative)
I guess the submitter was also Australian.
Second post?
More info (Score:5, Informative)
When asked to describe the process she says "To pattern the cell we spray on something like nail polish and then inkjet print a kind of nail polish remover which lets us etch certain parts of the wafer. This creates a metallisation pattern so we can deposit aluminium on the back surface of the solar cell and create our metal contacts to both the P and N-type silicon simultaneously using a very cheap, low temperature pizza oven! And hey presto we've created a simple, low-cost solar cell without having to use expensive high tech equipment or high temperature processes!"
(from here [amonline.net.au])
Hot! (Score:1, Informative)
AU postgrads own their IP (Score:5, Informative)
Re:sterling (Score:3, Informative)
The article summary and many of the comments are just really disappointing. Did the average IQ on Slashdot drop 20 points?
Re:Chick? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know what part of the world the submitter is from, but round here (South Africa) calling someone a "chick" is no more or less offensive or degrading than calling a man a "guy". Minor cultural difference, but it does make a lot of these "OMG Sexism" comments a bit confusing.
Re:how many (Score:4, Informative)
Unless the solar cells die out very quickly, that's pretty easy to manage. Pizza ovens hardly take an impressive amount of energy to run and benefit from scaling.
Re:Chick? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Right... (Score:4, Informative)
Information on the "applicant" (owner?): NewSouth Innovations Pty [nsinnovations.com.au]
Re:Right... (Score:2, Informative)
That is bullshit. If you want to prevent someone from patenting your creation after the fact, you release it wide and far without encumbrance. The fact that you have publicly released prior art prevents them from getting a patent, or overturns that patent should it pass through the patent office. Patents do not protect citizens from patents. Your argument is utter nonsense.
Re:"Crafty chick" (Score:5, Informative)
Get back in the kitchen and cook me a solar cell!
It would be nice if the article told us how it works ... if she has a way to get past transparent conductive oxide layers I would certainly be interested in hearing about it. Zinc Oxide deposition onto glass substrates is used for the black currant solar cell.
I like how that technique is being heralded by a company named Mansolar [mansolar.com]....
Well - reading the fucking article again, I did notice this ...
"While it could take five years to commercialise the patented technology"
Am I being an asshole for pointing out the irony of wanting to commercialize DIY solar cell technology?
""I love working with passionate people who want to help address climate change and poverty by thinking and experimenting outside the square," she said."
That reminds me of an episode of Pinky and the Brain. Something about Brain wanting to take over the world for the good of all man kind, and chanting kumbaya with a bunch of hippies... :-)
And are they talking about an electric pizza oven or a brick oven pizza oven? I imagine one would be depositing carbon all over the place ... which could help in some cases. The black currant technique requires a layer of graphite to be applied for the anode I think...
Your resident /. manarchist,
afxgrin
Re:I can give the poor of the world energy ... (Score:3, Informative)
You forgot about the expensive part... stringing-up power lines across all of sub-Saharan Africa to distribute the power. With distributed generation, like solar panels, you don't have to build that kind of terribly expensive infrastructure. There might be a place for such central power plants in the larger cities, but it likely won't help the really poor.
And coal really isn't cheap, as you're making it out to be. To build a large power plant, you need lots of up-front investment to construct a plant large enough that you aren't wasting 75% of the coal (your biggest operating cost), and then you also need the infrastructure to distribute coal on an extremely regular basis, which isn't going to be so easy with a land-locked country surrounded by politically unstable, potentially unfriendly, and possibly anarchic nations.
But hey, you've obviously know what you're talking about, as evidenced by all the facts and figures you've included in your proposal...
Re:Right... (Score:3, Informative)
So... most of those were, at one point, under patent. Once the patent protection ends, other drug companies can come in and duplicate the formula. That's the way the patent system is SUPPOSED to work. The fact is, it does work right sometimes. But the fact that it sometimes works right doesn't mean it always will. And the companies that are manufacturing the generics aren't the ones who developed them, which pretty much means your example has nothing to do with the matter at hand.
Re:Chick? (Score:3, Informative)
Um... Wow. the dictionary was written by old people.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chick [urbandictionary.com]. Notice the VERY FIRST DEFINITION. Australia? Ya think maybe?
The vast majority of the definitions/votes indicated that it was NOT derogatory.
Re:how many (Score:3, Informative)
At this point I should probably cry "tilt" and say that they don't really cool the water at all. Either turbine or piston, the effective energy you can get out of the thing is dependent on the heat of the steam going in minus the heat of whatever it is you get out. When I talk about cooling, and in all of these things you do cool, I suspect it's because when you're done with the steam you don't have water, you have "wet steam". (Incidentally, ISTR that for at least turbines, they have "driers" to get any liquid water droplets out and make sure that "dry steam" goes in. I'm not sure how important that is for a piston steam engine.) The cooling is to get it back to water - something that the boiler can use. I don't know, but strongly suspect that the water in the boiler is kept under pressure, and not permitted to expand into steam until it comes out.
In any case, to get back to the original point, you're heating hot water, not cold water.
Re:"Crafty chick" (Score:5, Informative)
Here are more details:
A typical photovoltaic cell is made of a thin boron doped P-type (P for positive) silicon wafer with positively charged 'holes' (missing electrons). [...] Metal contact is made to both the P and N-type silicon allowing electrons to flow out of the N-type silicon [...]
Unfortunately photovoltaic cells are expensive to produce, as you traditionally need access to elaborate, clean' manufacturing plants [...]
Nicole has spent the last two years researching an alternative manufacturing process [...] Using Inkjet printing, aluminium spray and a pizza oven, Nicole has created metal contacts to both the negative and positive sections of a solar cell
"[...] we spray on something like nail polish and then inkjet print a kind of nail polish remover which lets us etch certain parts of the wafer. This creates a metallisation pattern so we can deposit aluminium on the back surface of the solar cell and create our metal contacts to both the P and N-type silicon simultaneously using a very cheap, low temperature pizza oven!
from http://www.amonline.net.au/eureka/index.cfm?objectid=A4D69CF1-9890-B67D-2409EF3BFCD8F038&DISPLAYENTRY=true [amonline.net.au]
I assumed that producing ultra-pure silicon wafers was the most expensive part about making solar cells, but I guess this would also help.
Re:More info (Score:4, Informative)
So basically, she doesnt do jack about the real problem:
The creation of the doted silicon base substrate.
And its not "nail polish" or "nail polish remober", they create a liftoff mask with a chemically activated resist and sputter on aluminium contacts. (I still prefere ZnO...)
So this is a minor improvement on a non-critical point of the whole problem...
Re:Chick? (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously...the notion that there are bad words to use is mindboggling. Ok...so lets all get together and ban those nasty words, and then they will be replaced and other words will be used instead. I have heard the word "woman" used in a derogatory fashion more than I have heard the word "chick" used in the same way.
You make a good point, but at the same time completely miss the point of why some of us object to the use of the word "chick" in the summary. It isn't the word itself we object to (as you point out, it is ridiculous to ban specific words), it is the condescending tone that it gives the article summary that is objectionable.
It is perhaps a fine distinction I am trying to make, but - it isn't referring to her as a "chick" specifically that some found offensive, it is the attitude itself that is conveyed by the submitter that is offensive.
This is not to say that using the word "chick" is always inappropriate or offensive, only that it is inappropriate and offensive in this context - or at least myself and many others read it that way.
Make sense?
Re:Chick? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"Crafty chick" (Score:5, Informative)
"[...] we spray on something like nail polish and then inkjet print a kind of nail polish remover which lets us etch certain parts of the wafer. This creates a metallisation pattern so we can deposit aluminium on the back surface of the solar cell and create our metal contacts to both the P and N-type silicon simultaneously using a very cheap, low temperature pizza oven!
AHHAHAhhahahahaaaaaa.
I know what's going on. The above is "dumbed down" for the reporter, who has reported it "faithfully" - and now everyone is assuming she *actually* used nail polish, an inkjet printer, and a pizza oven. She didn't use ANY of those. She used a full blow IC Fab - the above sounds exactly like a regular old wafer etch step, just with metal instead of silicon and an "inket LIKE" application of the photoresist before the acid etch!
Ahhahhahahahaa. (wipes tear) You Loosers.
Re:how many (Score:3, Informative)
like to know WTF the patent is really about? (Score:3, Informative)
For practical details like whether she used a Canon IP3/4/5000 based on ease of refilling cartridges with whatever floats her boat... let's hope Ms. Kuepper writes the article for Make I just wrote her to suggest she write.
Getting the patent info and her e-mail address only took a few minutes of digging via google. Though I'll admit I
Besides, given that I mentioned slashdot, it's likely as not she'll show up on this discussion somewhere to tell us WTF she actually did.