SiLEAN
A novel lean process chain for the next generation of silicon heterojunction solar cells for TW-scale production.
Uniresearch Role
Uniresearch assists the coordinator in the daily management of the project, ensuring smooth operations and effective administration. In addition to these management and coordination responsibilities, UNR leads the project’s dissemination, communication, and exploitation activities. We facilitate high-quality communication among all partners, ensuring the timely distribution of project results and information to all interested parties. Our goal is to maximize the project’s impact by ensuring that key findings and advancements are widely shared and effectively utilized.
In addition, Uniresearch has assisted in the development of the SiLEAN project, co-drafting the project concept and writing the Horizon Europe proposal.
Team
Anna Molinari
Senior Grant Consultant
Alessandra Lucini Paioni
Grant Consultant
Monique van Baalen
Management assistant
Project
SiLEAN is a 3-year project addressing key challenges such as the high energy and material requirements for Si wafer manufacturing, limited current generation, and the use of scarce materials like silver, bismuth, and indium.
In the project, a lean process chain will be developed for the next generation of silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells. Our strategy involves utilizing epitaxially-grown wafers that require less energy, developing alternatives to the highly absorptive hydrogenated amorphous silicon for passivation and carrier-selective contacts, creating indium-free contact layers and silver-free metallization concepts, and implementing bismuth-free interconnection methods. The goal is to achieve solar cell efficiencies greater than 25.5% and module efficiencies over 23.5%, while reducing Si wafer and contacting costs by 50% and lowering the carbon footprint by up to 75%
Facts & Figures
- Acronym: SiLEAN
- Full name: Siliconsolar cells with Low Environmetal footprint and Advanced interfaces
- Start date: 1 May 2024
- Duration: 36 months
- Total budget: € 2,996,154.00
- EC funding: € 2,996,154.00
- EC contract number: 101147275
The project consortium consists of 8 partners from 5 countries.