Two Einstein Awards for Fraunhofer ISE

This year, the Einstein Award of SolarWorld AG and a Junior Einstein Award were awarded to scientists at Fraunhofer ISE. Prof. Dr. Eicke R. Weber, the director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE), was honored for his contribution to European solar energy research.

The young researcher Pierre Saint-Cast was awarded the Junior Einstein Award for successfully developing a new passivation method for silicon solar cells.

Dr. Frank Asbeck, CEO of SolarWorld, praised Prof. Weber as one of the greatest solar researchers in Europe. Under his direction, Fraunhofer ISE develops important know-how for the solar industry and carries it out to application maturity. But his area of work extends beyond this, Asbeck said: “Eicke Weber is one of the European communicators and propagators for solar energy per se. He gave solar energy a voice, which is heard beyond the scientific community and reaches into politics and society at large.”

“I am extremely delighted about this prize,” remarks Eicke Weber. “It reinforces my efforts in the struggle to keep Europe as a leading location for photovoltaics. Germany and Europe still hold the lead in photovoltaic research and production technology, due not the least to our intensive research in this area. “I am convinced that we can reach a global PV market of over 100 GW/year by 2020 and of 300 GW/year in 2025.”

Satin-Cast was honored for developing a new method of passivation on silicon-based solar cells. His work in this area resulted in a remarkable efficiency increase of 1%.

“I am elated to receive the SolarWorld Junior Einstein Award,” said Satin-Cast. “The aim of my work is to develop methods for increasing efficiencies, which, in turn, can quickly be transferred to the industrial production level. That this work is recognized with such a reputable prize is a great success.”

Five years ago, Saint-Cast came to Fraunhofer ISE as a doctoral student to work in the division of “PV Production Technology and Quality Assurance” and study the electrical losses on the back side of solar cells. His goal was to find a passivation layer that made it possible to reduce these losses. The post-doc at Fraunhofer ISE reached his goal. In a plasma reaction, he produced aluminum oxide and applied it to the wafer backside. Through this passivation, the light on the backside is no longer absorbed, but rather reflected back into the cell.

Thanks to Saint-Cast’s calculations, the energy losses on the backside of the solar cell are reduced to a minimum. As a result, the efficiency of these new solar cells is about 1% higher than that of conventional cells. Especially notable is the fast transfer of his research results to the industry. Two years after the first positive results, the newly developed processes were transferred to the industry.