Solar research center to open at OSU

Oregon State University will soon have a solar energy research center.

The Oregon Process Innovation Center for Sustainable Solar Cell Manufacturing has acquired some of its new equipment and will be fully operational by this May, officials said. It is a signature research facility of the Oregon Built Environment and Sustainable Technologies Center, or Oregon BEST, which provided an initial investment of $232,000 and helped to obtain additional funding.

Officials said the new center will give Oregon the potential to become an international leader in solar cell innovation and manufacturing.

“We’re reaching the limits of what can be done through incremental improvements in traditional, silicon-based solar cell technology,” said Greg Herman, an associate professor of chemical engineering at OSU and associate director of the center. “We’re aiming for a revolution in solar cell processing and manufacturing that might drop costs by as much as 90 percent while being more environmentally sensitive.”

The center will involve the efforts of more than 20 faculty and researchers from OSU, the University of Oregon, Portland State University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, allow collaboration with private industry, and provide unique student educational opportunities in some of the newest concepts in solar energy.

The facilities are being set up at the Microproducts Breakthrough Institute, a signature research facility of the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute. Additional support comes from OSU, ONAMI, and a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to OSU, CH2M HILL, Voxtel and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

The new center will help solar energy companies improve existing technologies, and also move toward next-generation solar cell concepts. It will provide a shared laboratory and equipment, serve as a resource to solve industry manufacturing problems, and be an educational training ground for solar energy engineers and scientists of the future.

The center will work closely with some of the leaders in solar energy in Oregon and around the world, said Chih-hung Chang, director of the center and the Sharp Laboratories Faculty Scholar at OSU. Collaboration is planned with Oregon companies such as SolarWorld, Voxtel and CH2M Hill, as well as leading universities in Germany, Taiwan and South Korea.