Comment by pfdietz
1 year ago
Which rare metals do they use? Silver for contact wires? If silver supplies were inadequate (they're not) these could be substituted for with copper, if a barrier layer was included between it and the silicon.
1 year ago
Which rare metals do they use? Silver for contact wires? If silver supplies were inadequate (they're not) these could be substituted for with copper, if a barrier layer was included between it and the silicon.
Maybe indium in ITO for those fancy transparent front contacts. Or tellurium in CdTe, supposedly still costeffective compared to “thick” Si cells. I would still give GGP a break it can be tricky to venture even small steps outside ones specialty these days
And, maybe in the future, gallium as a dopant in silicon cells, since it doesn't experience nearly as much light induced degradation as boron does. But dopants are used in very small amounts.
I think some power electronics uses europium silicide (or was that erbium?) as a gate material, so maybe in inverters? Again, the quantities would be small.