Black Silicon Solar Cells

Natcore Technology’s black silicon wafers are now in production line to be manufactured into solar cells. This has been done by one of the world’s largest photovoltaic manufacturers, which is located in China’s Hunan province. 

What is "Black Silicon?" It is referred to the apparent color of the surface of a silicon wafer after it has been etched with billions of nano-scale holes per square inch. The black color is not a color at all but results from the absence of reflected light from the porous wafer surface.

Five batches of the black silicon wafers were produced in the trial run and achieved 15.7%. This can easily be increased by optimizing the process. Also, this achievement, in the manufacturing environment, proves that black silicon process is commercially viable in real production line.

Dr. David Levy, Natcore’s Director of Research & Technology, they put these cells through the Chinese manufacturer’s process with essentially no modification to the process itself, except for the fact that certain steps were completely removed. The removal of these steps projects could low production cost as much as 23.5%.