Particle Accelerators Could Be the Key to Cheaper Solar Panels

Making solar panels is complicated work. There are a lot of steps to get from raw materials to a finished, fully functional solar panel. But did you know one of those steps can involve a particle accelerator? Minute Physics explains:

At their core, solar panels are made of the same thing computer chips are made of: silicon. Pure silicon is made in long cylinders, called boules, that are sliced into hundreds or thousands of very thin wafers. Usually, these wafers are less than a millimeter thick.

So how to slice them? Typically, manufacturers will use a saw, which works by removing some of the silicon to create a gap, turning part of that boule into silicon sawdust. But this means that much of the silicon is wasted. Instead of a saw, why not use a particle accelerator?

While you might be thinking of using the particle accelerator as a high-powered cutting laser, in actuality the process is much more subtle. The particle accelerator is fired face-on at the boule, and the accelerator embeds protons inside the silicon. Thanks to an interesting property of particle physics, charged particles like protons passing through a material will travel a very specific distance and stop.

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