Development and scale-up of very low-cost, light-weight, flexible solar cells Navy SBIR FY2010.2 Sol No.: Navy SBIR FY2010.2 Topic No.: N102-174 Topic Title: Development and scale-up of very low-cost, light-weight, flexible solar cells Proposal No.: N102-174-1338 Firm: SISOM Thin Films LLC 1209 West Gore Street Orlando, Florida 32805 Contact: Isaiah Oladeji Phone: (321) 415-1411 Abstract: This Phase I SBIR will develop a scaleable ambient atmosphere manufacturing process to make durable flexible inorganic CuSnZnS thin film solar cells. The existing nanomaterial film manufacturing techniques to fabricate thin film solar cells are cumbersome and may not be that cost effective. The vacuum material deposition technique on the other hand, is capital intensive and has high operation cost. The solution to these identified problems could be SISOM's proprietary "Streaming Process for Electroless Electrochemical Deposition" (SPEED) system. SPEED is an electroless aqueous based, low capital cost, low operational cost system capable of large area discrete or roll-to roll deposition of self-assembled nanomaterial based films directly on rigid or flexible substrates. The objectives of this Phase I research are to demonstrate a CuSnZnS solar cell manufactured on 10 cm x 10 cm area foil with at least 10 sub-cells with efficiency of at least 6% using SISOM's SPEED system. Achieving these results in Phase I will open a path towards increasing the cell efficiency to 10% in Phase II. Sisom will scale the process up to 12" web roll-to-roll production of CuSnZnS solar cells. The results of Phase II will move Sisom closer to commercializing thin film CuSnZnS solar cells. Benefits: Cu, Sn, Zn, and S are abundant elements and the water soluble raw materials of these elements required by SPEED are commoditized. These and the economy of scale of continuous roll-to-roll production by SPEED will enable us mass produce CuSnZnS solar cell at the cost of $0.50 per peak Watt at full production in the near future. This price point would significantly increase adoption of solar technologies in the military, particular at the warfighter level for personal power, at the base camp level, and for use in distributed sensing. It would also make the CuSnZnS solar cells very competitive to the traditional source of electricity; in other words, it would greatly shorten the payback period associated with investing in solar power for the home or business and thus could significantly increase adoption of solar technologies in general. Return