Featured in Weathering the storm in 2022 – 12-2022

Plating up

A reduction of silver consumption in PV production is required on the way to terawatt scale. Given this, the time may have come for the commercialization of new copper plating technologies – doing away with the need for silver in cell metallization altogether. However, the history of plating technology is littered with cautionary tales.

By

Jonathan Gifford

08 Dec 2022

A SunDrive engineer examine the fine copper metallization the company hopes to commercialize. | Image: SunDrive

Two startups are attempting to solve what has been a sticky challenge facing the solar industry: how to bring copper metallization into the mainstream of PV production as a replacement for costly and increasingly scarce silver. At the same time, the companies hope to tackle a major challenge as the industry scales towards the terawatt …

This article is part of pv+

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