Abstract
Introduction
The economic situation and, in particular, the upward trend in the price of
fossil energies and political pressure on the markets induced in part by
public opinion and in part by geopolitical aims to loosen the ties of energy
dependence has meant that considerable budgets have been allocated over many
years to the development of alternative energy sources. The production of
photovoltaic electricity is one promising avenue among these various types of
"clean energies". Three main technological avenues exist for the photovoltaic
energy production market: crystalline silicon, thin films and organic. This
study, which focuses on crystalline silicon technology, represents the first
part of a three-part analysis of the patent environment in the photovoltaics
field.
Crystalline silicon technology, the initial know-how of which was borrowed
from the microelectronics industry, is the first to have been developed, from
1960, with the emergence of photovoltaic solar generators on board satellites.
Later, the first terrestrial applications targeted isolated sites for which
this type of technology was well adapted and for which photovoltaic solutions
still often remain today the best option. The first rural electrifications and
houses equipped with solar panels first appeared, for their part, in 1980 and
have developed increasingly since the arrival of inverters enabling the
electricity generated to be injected into the mains network.
Crystalline silicon technology generates a considerable amount of R&D and
consequently invention patents, whether for the production of the silicon or
for the different steps of manufacturing the cells, with as principal
objective to improve the efficiency and to cut the cost of producing the
cells. Thus, in 20 years, efficiency has risen from 15% to 42.8% in
laboratories. This record was established in September 2007 by an American
team, headed by Allen Barnett and Christiana Honsberg and funded by the
"Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency" (DARTA) via the project entitled
"Very High Efficiency Solar Cell" (VHESC) involving Delaware University, MIT,
Georgia Institute of Technology and Rochester University. Over the same
period, the efficiency of commercial systems has, in turn, increased from 5%
to 22%.
This study aims to establish a panorama of the industrial property in order to
provide a clearer insight into the challenges and issues at stake and to
position the different players associated in silicon technology and provide a
complementary outlook to market studies. After an overall analysis of the
photovoltaics field, aimed at evaluating the technological weighting of each
of the technologies involved (crystalline silicon, thin films and organic), we
have focused herein more in detail on patents and patent applications, filed
between 1985 and mid 2007, that can be associated with crystalline silicon
technology.
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