评论
打印
When I first heard about using particle accelerators to create solar panels, I thought… what?!
当我第一次听说用粒子加速器制造太阳能电池板时，我想……什么?
I must not understand how solar panels are made.
我肯定不明白太阳能电池板是怎么制造的。
Or how particle accelerators work?
或者粒子加速器是如何工作的?
![@QR$1A~Z]O$3MDD8{U{1Z@6.png](http://upload.kekenet.com/2021/1123/36401637634225.png "36401637634225.png")
And yes, there’s a key, unglamorous step that – unless you’re fairly familiar with solar manufacturing technology (which I’m not) – you probably wouldn’t think of,
是的，有一个关键的、不起眼的步骤——除非你对太阳能制造技术相当熟悉(我不熟悉)——你可能想不到，
and it’s in this step where a particle accelerator turns out to be useful: cutting silicon into the really thin wafers that are the key component of a solar panel.
在这一步中，粒子加速器被证明是有用的:将硅切割成非常薄的晶片，而晶片是太阳能电池板的关键组件。
However, even this wasn’t at all what I first thought, which was something like slicing through the crystal with a super powerful particle beam.
然而，这与我最初的想法完全不同，我最初的想法是用超级强大的粒子束切割晶体。
That sounds awesome, but the actual technique is much less insane and much more clever.
这听起来很棒，但实际的技术远没有那么蠢笨，也聪明得多。
Ok, so a typical solar panel cell begins as a carefully grown cylinder of silicon atoms arranged in a regular crystal lattice, which are then trimmed and cut into wafer-thin…wafers.
好的，一个典型的太阳能电池板电池开始是一个精心形成的圆柱体，由硅原子排列在一个规则的晶体晶格中，然后将其修剪并切成极薄的晶圆。
Some of which retain curved corners as hallmarks of the original cylindrical crystal.
其中一些保留了圆角作为原始圆柱晶体的特征。
Then the wafers get covered with other metals, anti-reflective coatings and electrodes, and so on, to be able to capture the sun’s energy– but the part we want to focus on is the cutting.
然后在晶片上覆盖其他金属、抗反射涂层和电极等，以便能够捕捉太阳能——但我们想关注的部分是切割。
Because when you cut something with a saw, like silicon wafers normally are, there are two problems:
因为当你用锯子切割东西时，就像普通的硅片一样，会有两个问题:
one, you can't cut a slice too thin otherwise it might get broken – typical solar panel wafers are cut to about 0.15 millimeters.
首先，你不能切得太薄，否则它可能会破碎——典型的太阳能电池板的晶片被切到大约0.15毫米。
And two, unlike a knife which cuts by separating and wedging two pieces of material apart, a saw cuts with teeth that gouge and eat away at the material, turning it into saw-dust and leaving a gap called a kerf.
第二，不像用刀将两块材料分开并插入其中进行切割，锯子用齿切割并侵蚀掉材料，把它变成锯末，留下一个叫做切口的缺口。
In the case of silicon wafers, the gap is roughly the same width as the wafers themselves, which means about half of the original material goes to waste!
在硅晶圆的情况下，缺口大致与晶圆本身有相同的宽度，这意味着大约一半的原始材料被浪费了!
This is where particle accelerators come in: not as a high powered ablative cutting particle beam, but by taking advantage of the physics of crystals.
这就是粒子加速器的作用:不是作为高能烧蚀切割粒子束，而是利用晶体的物理特性。
If instead you shoot protons with a certain energy at the flat face of the silicon cylinder, those protons will embed themselves into the silicon.
相反，如果你把具有一定能量的质子射向硅圆柱体的平面，这些质子会嵌入到硅中。
The depth depends on how much energy they have, and the thinner you want, the less energy they take, so you can easily pick something super thin.
深度取决于它们有多少能量，你想要的越薄，它们消耗的能量就越少，所以你可能 很容易地选择一些超薄的东西。
But whatever thickness you choose, once inside the silicon crystal lattice, the protons kind of push it apart and create stress;
但无论你选择的厚度是多少，一旦进入硅晶格，质子就会把它推开，产生压力;
if you heat the whole thing up, a wafer will break right off, cleanly cleaving along the crystal lattice lines where the protons were.
如果你把整个晶体加热，晶片就会立刻断裂，沿着质子所在的晶体点阵线清晰地分裂。
So, if after the protons are embedded, but before the heating, you glue this proto-wafer onto a piece of glass or plastic,
因此，如果在嵌入质子之后，但在加热之前，你把这个原始晶圆片粘在一片玻璃或塑料上，
and then heat it up, you end up with a nice thin wafer of silicon attached to a durable (and possibly flexible) material, with no waste silicon whatsoever.
然后加热它，你最终得到一个漂亮的薄硅晶圆片附着在耐用(可能是柔性的)材料上，没有任何废弃的硅。
To me, this is clever physics engineering!
对我来说，这是聪明的物理工程!
Of course, a particle accelerator is much more expensive than a saw, so there must be some upsides to it – the biggest is that, by using significantly less silicon per wafer and not losing any silicon in the cutting process,
当然，粒子加速器比锯子贵得多，所以它肯定有一些好处——最大的好处是，每片晶片使用的硅显著减少，而且在切割过程中不会损失任何硅，
it’s possible to justify using much more expensive silicon that’s better at capturing sunlight,
可以证明使用更昂贵的更能捕捉阳光的硅是有可能的，
meaning the resultant solar panels for a given power output are smaller and need less other material to make them and hold them up, hence they’re cheaper.
这意味着在给定的功率输出下，合成的太阳能电池板更小，需要更少的其他材料来制造和支撑它们，因此它们更便宜。
Hopefully enough cheaper to make up for the extra costs of using a particle accelerator to part silicon!
希望足够便宜，以弥补使用粒子加速器来分割硅的额外成本!
The company that’s trying to use the particle-accelerator technology I talked about in this video to make solar cells on a commercial scale, this company is called Rayton Solar.
我在视频中提到的一家公司正在尝试使用粒子加速器技术来制造商业规模的太阳能电池，这家公司叫做雷顿太阳能公司。
This is a challenging and expensive endeavor and they’re looking for investors, so they sponsored this video to get the word out - startengine.com/startup/rayton-solar.
这是一项具有挑战性和昂贵的努力，他们正在寻找投资者，所以他们赞助了这段视频，以传播这个消息——startengine.com/startup/rayton-solar。
I’m not going to make any endorsement – I mean, I’m neither an investment expert, nor a solar industry expert
我不会做任何背书——我的意思是，我既不是投资专家，也不是太阳能行业专家
– but I do believe strongly that we need both political and technological solutions to secure our planet’s energy future,
-但我坚信，我们需要政治和技术解决方案，以确保我们星球的能源未来，
so I’m happy to help Rayton reach a broader audience to help give them a chance for this clever idea to succeed, and I’m making a small investment myself.
所以我很高兴能帮助雷顿获得更广泛的受众，让他们有机会实现这个聪明的想法，我自己也在做一笔小投资。
Hopefully they’ll end up being one of the many many pieces that come together to provide a civilized long-term future for humanity on earth.
希望它们最终能成为众多能源公司中的一个，共同为地球上的人类提供一个文明的长期未来。
