Thin-Film solar cells research grant!

imec the nanoelectronics research centre and Hasselt University, have announced that one of their scientists has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant. The grantee is Bart Vermang, researcher at IMOMEC, imec’s associated lab at the Hasselt University.

Bart Vermang

He receives two million euro to apply techniques from silicon solar cell processing to revolutionize the design of thin-film solar cells, improving their efficiency, cost and stability. With these 5-year ERC Starting Grants, the European Research Council wants to back young and promising researchers, giving them a perspective to pursue ambitious fundamental research that may lead to breakthroughs, and encouraging them to pursue a career in research and set up their own labs and teams.

Bart Vermang’s field of study is thin-film solar technology, more specifically CIGS(e) solar cells. These combine flexible use with high efficiency, but they still have stability and reliability issues. Vermang proposes to revolutionize the design of CIGS(e) solar cells by implementing advanced surface techniques, introducing structures and layers also used in silicon solar technology. This includes adding innovative nanostructures to capture more light into the cell’s active layers. Other new techniques he envisages are inversion layer emitters, passivated contacts and surface passivation layers, which will make energy generation more efficient by avoiding that charge carriers recombine. In combination, these new techniques should lead to cells with conversion efficiencies between 23 and 26% with an improved stability and reliability.

One of the main applications of thin-film solar cells will be building-integrated energy generation, where solar technology will be an integral part of building elements such as window panes, facade elements in all shapes, or curved roof covering. This is a key technology for Europe as regulations will require new buildings to become near energy neutral by 2020. The results of this research should directly lead to more efficient and long-lasting PV technology for buildings, and will thus contribute to reaching Europe’s ambitious climate goals.

Veronique de Halleux, Manager Public Funding at imec, comments: “With these Starting Grants, the European Research Council provides attractive long-term funding to excellent investigators to do groundbreaking research. This grant and the previous ones we were awarded show that imec is an excellent place to pursue such research, with the best infrastructure available and the pooled experience of our teams, many world-leading in their field. We therefore congratulate Bart Vermang and expect that his research will inspire other researchers at imec and elsewhere to set up ambitious research projects”.

@imec_int #PAuto #ThinFilm 

Grant for SMEs announced

National Instruments has announced a grant programme to support micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in embedded development. Starting in 2009, National Instruments UK and Ireland began offering very low cost training and certification to unemployed scientists and engineers to help them develop skills to aid in finding employment. In 2010, recognising that many of the innovative advances in technology over the past 20 years have been developed by small, entrepreneurial companies, the company is offering grants for software, support and training to micro, small and medium-sized companies (often known collectively as SMEs) that are developing embedded devices in areas such as medical, energy and green engineering.

Knowing that SMEs often have limited resources, they have created a grant programme that will award up to £25,000 (ca €26.6k) in software, support and training to selected SMEs that are evaluating the NI platform as a component of their devices. The goal of the new grant programme is to help these companies reduce the cost and complexity of development by providing them with technology such as the National Instruments LabVIEW graphical programming environment. The National Instruments software and hardware platforms for graphical system design are ideal for accelerating the design, validation and implementation of new concepts. The LabVIEW graphical programming environment makes system development faster and more intuitive, opening embedded development to scientists and engineers who are experts in their fields but not necessarily in traditional embedded software. When LabVIEW is used together with the FPGA-based CompactRIO architecture it enables the use of the latest embedded technology without the need for costly custom designs.

"National Instruments UK and Ireland is committed to supporting innovation," said Robert Morton, Managing Director. "Through this grant programme, National Instruments is supporting scientists and engineers based in the UK and Ireland who are developing innovative solutions to the grand challenges the world faces in energy, sustainability and healthcare .”

National Instruments UK and Ireland will accept applications throughout 2010. To apply for the programme, SMEs must provide documentation on the company and the project and participate in an interview.