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DOE OSTI · 2572961

Metal Complex Inks for Low-Cost Photovoltaic Material Metallization

Sinha, Sneh [Electroninks Incorporated, Austin, TX (United States)]·Smith, Mitchell [Electroninks Incorporated, Austin, TX (United States)]
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Abstract

The aim of the project titled “Metal Complex Inks for Low-Cost Photovoltaic Material Metallization” was to develop new metal complex conductive inks and pastes for PV, invented and commercialized by Electroninks, Inc. (EI, Austin, TX USA, https://electroninks.com), the only global supplier and scaled-manufacturing company of these metal complex inks. These materials were developed in this work for photovoltaic applications to significantly lower the cost of metallization, improve the manufacturability, and greatly reduce metal usage, while maintaining or improving device efficiencies when compared to traditional nanoparticle-based inks. The new pastes will do so by: 1) lowering the finger resistivity and precious metals usage by printing much denser (and therefore thinner/less material) metal films than possible with traditional particle-based screen-printed pastes; 2) decreasing the firing temperature to help preserve passivation; and 3) enabling a path to move the TW-scale PV industry from Ag to other materials including Ni, Cu, and Ni/Cu alloy pastes while continuing to leverage capital investment and expertise in screen printing metallization.

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32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION36 MATERIALS SCIENCEAlloyConductive InkConductive PasteCopperMaterialsMetal Complex InkNickelPVSolar

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Sinha, Sneh [Electroninks Incorporated, Austin, TX (United States)], Smith, Mitchell [Electroninks Incorporated, Austin, TX (United States)]. 2025-05-13. Metal Complex Inks for Low-Cost Photovoltaic Material Metallization. https://doi.org/10.2172/2572961

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