indium

Swedish researchers have developed a method to recycle valuable metals from flexible thin film copper-indium-gallium-diselenide (CIGS) solar cells under mild leaching conditions. They showed that 100% of silver and 85% of indium can be recovered after 24 hours of leaching at room temperature using two moles of nitric acid.

A Dutch-Chinese research team has developed a bifacial heterojunction PV cell with a 67% reduction in transparent conductive oxide (TCO) use. The TCOs used for the cell are based on indium(III) oxide (In2O3), which is considered a technology-critical element by many experts.

The European Commission has published its second annual assessment of the competitiveness of the EU’s renewable energy technology industries, and it had a warning for policymakers about the trade balance trend being experienced by heat pump makers.

Scientists in Germany investigated various routes to optimizing cell design for perovskite-silicon tandem products. Beyond the perovskite layer itself, they note several other areas that should be optimized for tandem cells, taking silicon heterojunction processing as a starting point. The research identifies several routes to cut costs in cell production, including a significant reduction in indium consumption.

Scientists Ayodhya Tiwari and Daniel Lincot recently spoke to pv magazine about the future of copper indium gallium selenide solar tech, which could play a key role in providing flexible, lightweight products in the building-integrated PV segment.

A team tasked by the European Commission with estimating the raw material requirements of the European energy transition found if global PV roll-out is high, and the component requirements of certain solar technologies don’t improve by a greater margin, some elements could end up in short supply.

Scientists at Rice University in the United States have found by strategically adding indium to an all-inorganic, lead-based perovskite, they can reduce the number of defects in the material and improve its efficiency, as well as providing a significant boost to stability.

A research team led by the University of Liverpool has developed a transparent conductive oxide material to replace tin with molybdenum. The results demonstrated better performance and potentially lower material costs than the transparent conducting layers used in today’s commercial solar cells.