Daniel Englander
Unstealthed: Solexel’s Mystery Science Revealed! February 29, 2008 at 4:24 PM
The Solexel saga continues to unfold. A LinkedIn profile sent to me by an informed observer shows that Wei Sun, Solexel’s Process Development Engineer, has been very busy over the last few years developing “large, composite depletion regions constructed using porous silicon.”
The magic is inside.
According to Wei Sun’s University of Rochester technologies page, this is a porous silicon structure that “can be used to enhance the charge collection efficiency in solar cells.” In this process “the pores, with a large depth-to-diameter ratio, trap the photons inside and because of the j-n [sic, I think] junction annulus on each pore wall, the photons have a high probability of generating an electric current.” Heh. He said annulus.
This results “in enhanced charge collection efficiency and reduced combination effects” and matches the previous description of Solexel as developing “high efficiency, cost-reduced energy conversion products” using MEMS.
Hey John, am I close yet?
[...] solar company backed by Kleiner Perkins and Technology Partners. Those reports can be found here, here, and here. A few more things have unfolded since [...]