16 May 2008 -- IBM said it developed a concentrator photovoltaics (CPV) cooling technology that can cool a solar cell from greater than 1,600 degrees Celsius to 85 C.
Concentrating the equivalent of 2,000 suns on a small area generates enough heat to melt stainless steel. IBM said its liquid metal cooling interface transfers heat from the solar cell to a copper cooling plate in a system that uses methods developed for the microprocessor industry.
IBM's CPV technology uses a thin layer of a liquid metal made of a gallium and indium compound that is applied between the chip and a cooling block. These thermal interface layers transfer the heat from the chip to the cooling block so that the chip temperature can be kept low.
The technology is designed for use in PV installations capturing up to 230 watts onto a centimeter square solar cell. That energy is then converted into 70 watts of usable electrical power.
IBM said it believes this technology will result in a lower number of PV cells in solar farms, concentrating more light onto each cell using larger lenses.
While concentrator-based PV technologies have been around since the 1970s, they have received renewed interest in recent times. With very high concentrations, they have the potential to offer solar electricity for large-scale power generation, as long as the temperature of the cells can be kept low, and cheap and efficient optics can be developed for concentrating the light to very high levels.
Articles 
| View all PennWell sites | View all PennWell events
Add RSS Feed
Click Here to Subscribe to the Power Engineering E-Newsletter
