HZB's ILGAR Process Announced German High Tech Champion 2011:

Scientists from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (HZB - Helmholtz Centre Berlin for Materials and Energy) are amongst the four Germany High Tech Champions distinguished in the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft's competition. The team around Prof. Dr Christian-Herbert Fischer was awarded the prize in June 2011 at the Clean Technology Conference & Expo in Boston, USA, for its patented Ion Layer Gas Reaction Process (ILGAR). The process developed at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin enables the environmentally friendly production of thin film solar cells. In Boston the researchers were given the chance to present their process for the production of thin film solar cells to interested companies and to establish contacts with these. Moreover, the team received prize money to the amount of 10,000 Euro for travelling to the USA and for preparing the presentation of their business case in a manner appropriate for the target audience.

Environmentally Friendly Production

With the  ILGAR process semiconductor layers of the highest quality for thin film solar cells can be produced in standardised processes and without poisonous cadmium sulphide. The thus produced puffer indium sulphide or zinc sulphide/indium sulphide layers not only substitute the poisonous cadmium. ILGAR also renders obsolete a process called "Chemical Bath Deposition", which is regarded as slow and harmful to the environment. The solar cells produced by using the ILGAR process display very good performance characteristics (so far up to 16.4 per cent efficiency) and turned out to be extremely durable. A pilot production line for ILGAR is successfully in operation at a German photovoltaics company, so that the marketability of the process already has been proven. The German High Tech Champion competition aims at advertising abroad Germany as a research location and to support inventors and developers of technology at German universities and extramural research institutions in increasing their contract research success on an international level. The pilot countries for this new campaign are the USA and France.

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