Physicist, Eric Mazur, and his graduate students were financed by the Army Research Organization to explore catalytic reactions on metallic surfaces. In the 90′s, Mazur was afraid that the research money would soon stop so he wrote in a new direction into his research proposal, and to this day doesn’t know why he did it. It wasn’t until more recently that he asked a graduate student to pick up on the research. The graduate student then shined a powerful laser on a silicon wafer’s surface and then on a hunch exposed the wafer to sulfur hexafluoride, a gas used by the semiconductor industry to make etchings for circuits.
The result was a black silicon wafer, but under an electron microscope, the surface was riddled with “spikes.” Much like many accidental discoveries, the researchers didn’t know what they created, but after testing, they found that they had just created an ultra-sensitive silicon material that can potentially be used in a wide array of products. The most important of which is solar panels. Early findings show that black silicon could absorb twice as much light as a traditional silicon wafer and can also detect infrared light which traditional silicon cannot detect. The possibility to see solar efficiencies jump from the 40% range up to the 70-80% range does not seem impossible.
Another great thing about the find is that traditional manufacturing processes do not have to be overhauled. It seems that any manufacturer of solar panels can make the black silicon without much effort. Unfortunately, the first to get their hands on this new technology is, of course, the military.
via nytimes
Tags: black silicon, solar, solar energy
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