Course Description

Photovoltaics - From Device Physics to Manufacturing

by Dr. Pierre Verlinden, AMROCK Pty Ltd, Australia.

Course material

New – The slides used for the course are available here (access limited to attendees, password required).

Table of contents

Day 1:
- Introduction
- World PV Market
- Basic concept, Spectral Response, Quantum Efficiency
- Semiconductor Equations. Differential Method.
- Long and Short base.
- Back Surface Field
- Opaque and transparent emitters
- Integral Method, Generation and recombination currents
- Efficiency
- Characterization techniques for lifetime and surface recombination velocity
- Maximum efficiency prediction
- PV technologies
- Solar Spectrum, Sun position

Day 2:
- Crystalline Si solar cells
- low-cost technologies (screen-printing process)
- Laser Grooved Buried Contact (LGBC)
- High-efficiency concepts and technologies:
- Emitter Jo optimisation
- PERC and PERL cells
- Interdigitated Back Contact (IBC) or Point Contact (PC) cells - Solar cell modelling
- PC1D (practical exercise)

Day 3:
- Multi-junction solar cells
- Concentrator PV
- Thin-film technologies: CdTe, CIGS, a-Si
- Thermo-Photovoltaics (TPV)
- Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE)
- Solar Advisor Model (SAM) (practical exercise)

Short biography

Dr Pierre Verlinden has 30 years of experience in photovoltaic technologies. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the UCL, Belgium, in 1985. He was one of the founders of California's SunPower Corporation where he served as Director of Research and Development until 2001 and where he designed and fabricated solar cells with world record efficiency. These cells powered Honda's solar racecar and NASA's Helios solar airplane.
He was Manager of PV Technology and Operations at Origin Energy's SLIVER plant in Adelaide. Dr Verlinden is now an independent consultant in PV technology, director of AMROCK and Principal Scientist at Solar Systems Pty Ltd. Pierre was responsible for orchestrating Solar Systems' technology transition from silicon solar cells to higher efficiency multi-junction III-V solar cells.

When : On May 31st, June 1st and 2nd 2010

Time-table :

9:00-10:30 : course

10:30-11:00 : coffee break

11:00-12:30 : course

12:30-14:00 : lunch

14:00-15:30 :  course

15:30-16:00 : coffee break

16:00-17:30 : course

Where : Auditoire Sud 1 (see map, E8)

http://www.uclouvain.be/cps/ucl/doc/adpi/documents/PLAN_2007recto.pdf

Some parking places have been reserved  for non-UCL members, on Parking 11 (Ste Barbe, E8 on map).  They  will be marked by a "Photovoltaics" A3 poster, and arrowed from the N4 road on.

Sponsors:

Registration until May 25th (within the limits of available places), on the Musics website.

Free of charge for university members, 600 € for non-university participants  (account will be precised later on)