Christopher Lund

The aims of the project were to scope and develop sustainable energy curriculum frameworks for Australian higher education Institutions that meet the needs of Australian and international student graduates and employers, both now and into the near future. The focus was on student centred learning and outcomes and to support graduates with the knowledge, skills and generic attributes required to work in the rapidly expanding sustainable energy industry in Australia and globally. The outputs of the project are designed to be relevant to specialist Sustainable Engineering and Energy Studies programs, as well as conventional engineering, science and humanities and social science programs that have a sustainable energy focus or major.

This guide is to support institutions in developing and teaching tertiary level programmes for sustainable energy professionals. Ongoing curriculum renewal is more difficult but vital for multidisciplinary courses preparing graduates to work in a specialised rapidly changing field. After more than 15 years of offering tertiary level “sustainable energy” qualifications in Australian Universities there was a clear need to assess how these courses are taught and develop curriculum frameworks to guide Universities designing/redesigning programs and courses to provide graduates with the relevant skills, knowledge and attributes (capabilities) seen by graduates and employers as required to work in this rapidly changing field. This guide presents the sustainable energy curriculum frameworks developed by the “Renewing the sustainable energy curriculum – providing internationally relevant skills for a carbon constrained economy” project, which was conducted over a two-and-a-quarter year period.

Thin films of hydrogenated amorphous silicon have been prepared by chemical vapour deposition at atmospheric pressure from a mixture of silanes over a heated substrate. This approach provides an alternative method to glow discharge and it has several substantial advantages, including safety and lower costs. Solar cells fabricated from these films show open circuit voltages of up to 400 mV but current densities are low. This has been attributed to a low hydrogen content in the films. A wide range of analytical techniques has been established and used to characterise the material and confirm the low hydrogen content as a one of the obstacles to the production solar cell quality films Modifications to the deposition technique are now proposed.

Thin films of hydrogenated amorphous silicon have been prepared by chemical vapour deposition at atmospheric pressure from a mixture of silanes over a heated substrate. This approach provides an alternative method to glow discharge and it has several substantial advantages, including safety and lower costs. High deposition rates have been obtained by use of a silent electrical discharge in the gas stream prior to the deposition process. Solar cells fabricated from these films show open circuit voltages of up to 400 mV but current densities are low. This is attributed to a low hydrogen content in the films. Physical and chemical characterization techniques have been used to identify the limiting factors in the performance of these devices. Further research is proposed to improve the efficiency of the photovoltaic devices.