The annual solar cell production has exceeded 100 GW in 2017 and in some parts of the world, photovoltaics is by far the cheapest way to generate electricity, even beating the marginal costs of a coal-fired power plant. At UNSW Sydney, we have been working on photovoltaics (PV) for more than 4 decades in which we have successfully developed and commercialised various technologies such as the buried-contact and PERC solar cell, copper plating, laser doping, and advanced hydrogenation which enabled the rapid development of the PV industry. We were also the first to start a dedicated tertiary program in the field of PV resulting in 100s of our alumni being an integral part of the PV industry.
This online textbook was developed at UNSW in collaboration with Arizona State University to complement the Photovoltaic Manufacturing Course and is offered free of charge to the PV community. The goal is to present a comprehensive overview of solar cell manufacturing and highlight some of the trends in the field. We think this resource is valuable for university students, as well as professionals working (or aspiring to work) in the PV industry. We intend to continuously keep adding new content to the website, as the PV manufacturing field is quickly evolving.
The project funding for the first iteration of the online textbook was provided by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) via the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics (ACAP) under Grant “CGR3 – Development of online educational resources for PV manufacturing education” and the Faculty of Engineering of UNSW.
Editor in Chief:
- Professor Bram Hoex, UNSW, Australia
Contributors:
- Zubair Abdullah-Vetter (text), UNSW, Australia
- Dr Andre Augusto (Text & Video), Arizona State University, United States
- Pradeep Balaji (Text), Arizona State University, United States
- Daniel Chen (Text & Video), UNSW, Australia
- Jack Colwell (Voice Over), UNSW, Australia
- Xin Cui (Text), UNSW, Australia
- David Dixon (Text), UNSW, Australia
- MoonYong Kim (Text & Video), UNSW, Australia
- Rob Largent (Photos), UNSW, Australia
- Derwin Lau (Photos), UNSW, Australia
- Alex To (Text & photos), UNSW, Australia
- Utkarshaa Varshney (Text), UNSW, Australia
- Tian Zhang (Text)
- Jing Zhao (Animations), UNSW, Australia
