Assuming you have a limited budget, you can set up a decent lab enough to teach the students the fundamentals and have them look into more advanced methods of dye cells, amorphous materials and the like. I suggest starting cheap, keep your money in reserve for when you need it. Build a basic spin coating setup, get the basic equipment you need to build some simple spin-coated devices; wafers, contacts, active materials, etc..

You'll need an artificial sun for testing, but you can build one rather than buy an expensive one. NREL has published some calibration parameters on using regular hardware-store quartz lamps (you need to aim for about 1000 watts per square meter). You'll definitely need a solar incidience meter to test your artificial sun and your outdoor response; you can build one, but it won't be calibrated. Get a calibrated SIM for a few hundred bucks, and from that you you can build some more, it's a fairly simple circuit.

A decent optical microscope is needed for testing, some kind of annealing oven and then later on you can add characterization equipment, like a home-brew X-Ray diffraction setup, or purchase an older one. An ellipsometer and eventually TEM/FEM would be helpful, as would a vapor deposition setup, which you can build yourself, start small and gradually add capabilities.

But your students can do a lot of work, potentially cutting-edge work, with a basic spin-coating setup, SIM, and artificial sun. There is no point in plopping down too much money to start, because you'll need to decide what your lab's niche will be ... maybe you'll get into carbon nanotubes and reduced recombination, maybe dye cells, maybe concentrators, crystalline, some kind of ion-liquid with spin coating, roll-roll film, etc.. Starting from scratch is a huge luxury because you won't be burdened with equipment for which you need to justify research.

A very basic setup (assuming you already have things like test benches, a machine shop and computers) can be purchased and built for about US$5,000 (basic supplies, spin coating, a SIM, etc.). Once you find your areas of speciality, you'll quickly move to about US$50,000 just to get the basic characterization gear (homebrew XRD, microscopes, annealing, etc), and then you'll spend about US$500,000 to build focused lab that has the basic equipment needed to do focused research. (Homebrew ellipsometery, maybe a basic old tech TEM/FEM, a small cleanroom, homebrew vapor deposition, etc..)

For comparison, a high-end, world class PV lab can spend $10 million with barely a burp, and above $100 million for some highly focused labs.

I would like to add vigorous support of Vasile's answer above, who suggests some real world application with ready-made cells. His path should be taken regardless your desire to set up a basic device fabrication lab, because that kind of real-world knowledge will add value to your student's education, they'll be employable, they'll solve real-world problems in solar energy and they'll be trained to know how to deploy solar energy in the field.

Assuming you have a limited budget, you can set up a decent lab enough to teach the students the fundamentals and have them look into more advanced methods of dye cells, amorphous materials and the like. I suggest starting cheap, keep your money in reserve for when you need it. Build a basic spin coating setup, get the basic equipment you need to build some simple spin-coated devices; wafers, contacts, active materials, etc..

You'll need an artificial sun for testing, but you can build one rather than buy an expensive one. NREL has published some calibration parameters on using regular hardware-store quartz lamps (you need to aim for about 1000 watts per square meter). You'll definitely need a solar incidience meter to test your artificial sun and your outdoor response; you can build one, but it won't be calibrated. Get a calibrated SIM for a few hundred bucks, and from that you you can build some more, it's a fairly simple circuit.

A decent optical microscope is needed for testing, some kind of annealing oven and then later on you can add characterization equipment, like a home-brew X-Ray diffraction setup, or purchase an older one. An ellipsometer and eventually TEM/FEM would be helpful, as would a vapor deposition setup, which you can build yourself, start small and gradually add capabilities.

But your students can do a lot of work, potentially cutting-edge work, with a basic spin-coating setup, SIM, and artificial sun. There is no point in plopping down too much money to start, because you'll need to decide what your lab's niche will be ... maybe you'll get into carbon nanotubes and reduced recombination, maybe dye cells, maybe concentrators, crystalline, some kind of ion-liquid with spin coating, roll-roll film, etc.. Starting from scratch is a huge luxury because you won't be burdened with equipment for which you need to justify research.

A very basic setup (assuming you already have things like test benches, a machine shop and computers) can be purchased and built for about US$5,000 (basic supplies, spin coating, a SIM, etc.). Once you find your areas of speciality, you'll quickly move to about US$50,000 just to get the basic characterization gear (homebrew XRD, microscopes, annealing, etc), and then you'll spend about US$500,000 to build focused lab that has the basic equipment needed to do focused research. (Homebrew ellipsometery, maybe a basic old tech TEM/FEM, a small cleanroom, homebrew vapor deposition, etc..)

For comparison, a high-end, world class PV lab can spend $10 million with barely a burp, and above $100 million for some highly focused labs.

I would like to add vigorous support of Vasile's answer above, who suggests some real world application with ready-made cells. His path should be taken regardless your desire to set up a basic device fabrication lab, because that kind of real-world knowledge will add value to your student's education, they'll be employable, they'll solve real-world problems in solar energy and they'll be trained to know how to deploy solar energy in the field.

Dear Michael,

Thank you for your informative answer.

One needs to measure the dark and illuminated I-V solar cells and solar panel characteristics. One may need also to measure the small signal and dynamic parameters of the solar cells. On also may need to measure the spectral response of the solar cells.

A proper list of equipment may be:

- A sun simulator or Quartz-halogen lamps to illuminate the cells

- A standard cell to measure the incident solar radiation intensity.

- Linear optical filter to analyse the insolation

- Standard digital multimeters

- Electronic load or a n-MOS transistor

- Standard signal generator

- Standard oscilloscope

- Standard laboratory power supply.

- Electronic thermometer

- Variac

- NI DAQ card

- Advanced PC or laptop

-wires and cables

The experiments performed on the solar cells will be described in the next post

Best wishes