Yingli seals research deal with Californian start-up Innovalight

China’s Yingli Green Energy has set the seal on a research, development and production deal with Californian start-up Innovalight.

The collaboration aims to advance silicon ink nanotechnology that has been shown to boost the average efficiency of multicrystalline PV solar cells.

“We believe strong research and development capabilities are critical to strengthen our industry leadership, and we have recently launched a series of innovation initiatives,” says Yingli Green Energy chief technology officer Dengyuan Song.

“Our collaboration with Innovalight once again re-affirms our commitment to technology advancement and allows us to bring the benefits of cutting-edge technologies to our valued customers.”

Innovalight both manufactures the nanotechnology-based silicon ink and licenses a proprietary platform process that can be used to upgrade solar cell manufacturing lines to produce higher-performance PV cells and lower cost.

The ink, which is made of silicon nanoparticles dispersed in an environmentally friendly blend of chemicals, aids the cell in absorbing a wider range of the light spectrum than standard crystalline silicon (CSi), particularly the short-wavelength ‘blue light’.

Last month China’s JA Solar unveiled a new CSi ‘selective emitter’ cell inscribed with Innovalight silicon ink that claimed efficiencies of 18.5%.

Darius Snieckus

http://www.rechargenews.com/energy/solar/article223679.ece