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physical vapor deposition, CdS by a modified chemical bath deposition process, and ITO and Mo by sputtering. More process optimization should improve the module performance in the near future. NREL and GSE shared an R&D 100 Award in 2004 for development of the GSE CIGS technology. 3.5 Flow of Venture Capital to CIGS Start-Ups Accelerates We note the acceleration of private and venture capital funding (over $100M) to CIGS start-ups, most of which were spun off or supported by NREL in-house and Thin Film Partnership research and National R&D Teams. We also note the budget pressures resulting from this evolution. The success of PV in the marketplace has generated a wave of private funding interest for start-ups of all kinds in PV, and in particular for those involved with CIGS. In the last month, announcements of major investment have come from: Wurth Solar (55M Euros), Miasole ($16M), Nanosolar ($20M), and Heliovolt ($8M). Wurth Solar is a German company that bases its technology on multi-source evaporation, harkening back to the original CIGS work at Boeing and within NREL (all DOE supported). Wurth has about 1–2 MWp of current CIGS production and makes the most efficient thin-film product in the world (about 11% total area efficiency). The other three are U.S. start-ups that are pre- commercial; in fact, they are pre-prototype module development. Their ideas are based on reducing the capital cost and raising the throughput of CIGS versus existing approaches. Together with NREL support, they are making decent but not outstanding cells (5%–10%). NREL support has been mostly from consultation or Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) with in-house CIGS experts and the NREL Measurements and Characterization Group; and work with the NREL CIS National Research Team. We are starting a new subcontract with one (Nanosolar) to do work in high-throughput selenization of foil-based CIGS films, a known bottleneck in selenization approaches. Overall budget shortfalls in the Thin Film Partnership are preventing us from seeking out additional subcontracts with promising new start-ups, such as Miasole and Heliovolt, and another recent start- up, Daystar ($9M from a public offering in 2004), so we are seeking other forms of collaboration and support. To illustrate the relationships involved: Daystar’s founder, John Tuttle, is an ex-NREL CIS scientist; Heliovolt founder Billy Stanbery, was funded by the Partnership at Boeing and later at the University of Florida; Nanosolar head of R&D Chris Eberspacher was funded by the Partnership at Unisun; and Miasole received direct NREL in- house support via Rommel Noufi and his CIGS team. The advent of substantial private funding for CIGS start-ups is a major change in the path for development of CIGS. Prior to this, venture money was almost nonexistent, which prevented this channel of development. The change is very favorable for CIGS and allows us to leverage the exceptional in-house NREL CIGS expertise and characterization capabilities as a leading method of supporting outside activities (complementing support via the Partnership subcontracts). However, we also foresee the possibility some new difficulties. Start-ups are notoriously hurried to develop technology, which leaves them vulnerable to pitfalls (e.g., in manufacturing and reliability). None of these start-ups have the resources to test their new products in any depth. Thus we foresee a period when we may need to support them with our own testing capabilities, if only to avoid potential black eyes from first-time manufacturing failures and field failures. We also foresee the potential for these companies to seek local political support, which may in turn lead to undesirable pressure to create new earmarks. This is unfortunate collateral damage from our own budget shortfalls. 3.6 Thin Film Partnership Management The Partnership had several management accomplishments of note during the fiscal year, as discussed below. Web Site. We completed a major update of the Partnership Web site to make it much more accessible. This was accomplished by: • Including descriptive text with each entry. • Making the whole site searchable by keywords and authors. This is a very powerful tool. • Adding a “most recent” list of the last 10 items posted for those who just want to see what's new. • Adding a “Features” link to the home page, for newsworthy items such as the recent capacity announcements. With the new excitement in thin films, we expect the site to be used frequently. Before even being announced, the Web site had 200 hits on April 4, Photovoltaic R&D Advanced Materials and Devices 45PDF Image | DOE Solar Energy Technologies Program
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