Malachite Technologies has been awarded a $225,000 Phase I SBIR grant for its proposal “Low damage sputter magnetron for Silicon Heterojunction PV Production”.
The funds will be used to develop a unique low damage PVD magnetron source to enable a single, high throughput production system to drive down the capital equipment and production costs of high efficiency silicon HIT (heterojunction intrinsic thin) solar cells.
HIT solar cells are one of the best performing terrestrial PV cell designs, but has been slow to achieve major market share due to costs and yield issues in production. This project will explore the possibility of converting the cell fabrication to an all PVD solution, enabling a disruptive change in the current state-of-the-art.
The program is partnering with Prof Zachary Holman of Arizona State University which has extensive solar cell fabrication and characterization facilities.