On Fri, 14 Dec 2001, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> Regular Si solar cells are certainly feasible in the 10-20% region
> (the lower efficiencies being poly-silicon which may be easier to
> produce on the Moon). You might be able to push it up to ~24%. But
Current models involve a mobile robotic platform melting the regolith (a
solar oven from an aluminized mylar concentrator could probably do that)
and sputtering the semiconductor on top of the glass into few um layers. A
few 10 kg of Si plus dopants will thus result into a pretty impressive
initial power base.
> you have to use multi-layer cells made from different materials with
> higher and lower energy band gaps to get into the 30+% region.
What's the obsession with efficiency at this early point of the game? If
you've got a few 100 km^2 lunar plains covered with hardware, it doesn't
really matter that much whether it's 5% or 25%.
And late stuff is all spaceborne, anyway, where efficiency is even less
relevant, considering that we have enough material in the inner solar
system to intercept the entire solar output.
-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
______________________________________________________________
ICBMTO: N48 04'14.8'' E11 36'41.2'' http://www.leitl.org
57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:26 MDT