make your own solar cells?

Silicon photovoltaic cells require similar processing steps as used in making other semiconductor devices (clean room, metallization chamber, doping chamber, photolithography, etc.)

I suppose it depends on what your goals are ... a school science project or a product that approaches commercial standards. I consulted for a PV manufacturer for 3 years (circa 1996) and they used a clean room and 6 silicon furnaces! Not to mention laser trimming machines and bunch of other exotic and expensive stuff.

Bell Labs put out a nice kit that anyone can use for this, with the necessary ingredients, back in the mid-1960's. Including the method to make your own oven to reach the needed temps. It's still being sold by the new holder of the rights and I think I can track him down, if needed. I believe the kit cost today is about $30 or so, US.

The upshot is... No, you don't need photolithography for a photovoltaic cell, nor a clean room, etc. Of course, it's a demonstration thing and not production. But photovoltaic cells are probably the one semiconductor process requiring the least technology to achieve.

And more, it doesn't cost a lot of money to build your own chamber (quartz, water cooled jacket, nickel plated steel chamber, tungsten halogen lamps and simple reflectors, power controllers, etc. (I've done it to test some ideas.) What is the real problem is the gases you often want, like silane (pyrophoric SiH4 gas that finds tiny cracks in your piping and burns to widen them, eventually exploding), phosphine (pyrophoric PH3 gas, poisonous, bad news), and arsine (AsH3, hyper- deadly with a TLV of 50ppb, but stable gas.)

But I believe that the Bell Labs kit was about as safe as anything can get and dead cheap.

Jon

Yes, I guess that was my point, too. It depends on what you are trying to achieve -- a demonstration on one end and commercial production on the other. I had no idea where the poster was at, of course. But I had a hard time imagining it was commercial production.

Heck, mere metal in contact can make a nice schottky diode (galena crystal imbedded into molten lead allowed to cool), I think. I suppose there might even be some photovoltaic properties for that, too.

Jon

If you have the url of whoever is selling this kit I'd be gratefull! Also, fwiw, I'm just trying to have fun and experiment but probably without caustic poisonous gases!

Thanks,

Zander

Any time there is an "energy hill" between two conductors/semiconductors in contact, there are several interesting possibilities. Thanks for your comments.

I see what I can find out. I'd tracked them down a few years back and they'd bought all the rights a long time ago, themselves, which makes me worry that they are "getting on in years" by now. They were located on the east coast, like in New Jersey or something like that, so I'll see what I can find. My original search had me finding an old address and phone number over and over again and it took some real sleuthing to find their current location and number. Maybe it has gotten easier or maybe I can find my notes.

I'll let you know.

Jon

Jonathan Kirwan wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Thanks Jon,

try here: