AstroPower Inc. (Newark, DE) recently won a $2.8 million contract from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL, Golden, CO) to develo¥silicon solar cells. Commonly available solar cells use crystalline silicon wafer arrays, with a resultant energy cost of $4 per watt. AstroPower uses an alternate technology of growing silicon thin films on lowcost ceramic substrates and will be further developing this approach for the NREL. The cells will incorporate light trapping to increase conversion efficiency, as well as costlowering
Wolfram Research moves into opticaldesignsoftware market
