Presentation of the CESES group

Objectives

The world wide energy field must satisfy an increasing demand despite resource scarcity and greenhouse gas emission is also to be controlled in order to face threaten with change of the climate ^[1].Changes in the used technologies and switching from conventional to renewable energies will, of course, depend on the price of the produced kWh. In the coming decades, the supply, storage and utilization of sustainable energy will continue to be an important topic on the global research agenda.In such a context, solar energy exhibits numerous advantages from the environmental point of view but also at the economic level. In 2007, the world market of photovoltaic devices increased by more than 40% with 2.3 GW newly set up. With an increasing cost of fossil energy photovoltaic energy is nowadays competitive in some states of the US and it also should be the case for most Southern European countries in 2015 and in 2020 for the rest of Europe^[2]. Four countries outclass the global photovoltaic market: Spain by multiplying by three its plants joints the three most involved countries that are Germany, Japan and the USA. Italy, France and South Corea rise with a significant market whereas China and Taiwan appear as important partners for the production of photovoltaic panels. However photovoltaic (PV) energy represents only 0.05% of the world electricity production^[3] and 95% of the market is monopolised by crystalline silicon solar cells (I^st generation). The cost over efficiency ratio still remains a critical parameter in the choice of materials but also in the technology to be developed^[4]. In particular the high cost of Si with respect to the efficiency of the mono-gap solar cells limits the extension of PV market. In order to reduce this ratio, new approaches are currently under progress at the industrial and research level (II^nd generation solar cells: thin films based on Copper Indium Gallium Sulfide or Selenide, CIGS or Dye Sensitize Solar Cells, DSSC…)^[5] or still only in the research field (III^rd generation solar cells: organics, Metallic Intermediate Bandgap, MIB). Novel materials form a key ingredient for new energy conversion and storage solutions, and recent developments in nanotechnology offer exciting opportunities in this field.The CASES activity aims to transform fundamental chemical and physical knowledge into engineering solutions in the areas of Energy and is mainly focused on :

• II^nd generation photovoltaic solar cells based on chalcogenides
• III^nd generation photovoltaic solar cells with high efficiency and photobatteries based on nanostructured titanium oxides

[3] Key World Energy Statistics (2005) ; OECD/IEA Edition

[4] M.A. Green, K. Emery, D.L. King,S. Igari, W. Warta, Prog. Photovolt: Res. Appl. 11 39 (2003).

[5] Lawrence L. Kazmerski Solar photovoltaics R&D at the tipping point: A 2005 technology overview, Journal of Electron Spectroscopy and Related Phenomena 150 (2006) 105–135

Composition of the team

Responsable : BESLAND Marie-Paule (DR)

11 permanents :

20 non-permanents :