Solar Cells. 11 (1984) 307 - 308 307

Book Review

Solar Energy Patents by Pat Ryan and Ray Carpenter; published by Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, June 1983, available from Australian Government Publishing Service, P.O. Box 64, Canberra, Australian Capital Terr i tory 2600, Australia; 306 pp. ; price, A $21.95

This publication is an Australian Patent Office technology evaluation report. It provides a detailed survey of patents in the solar energy field in two parts. The first part deals with solar thermal energy and describes activity in this area from 1920 to 1983 as revealed by patents filed with the Australian Patent Office during this period.

The second part on direct energy conversion is of more relevance to solar cell workers. It is also more general in scope since it assesses other than Australian patent specifications, and in particular those of the U.S.A., the European Patent Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization. As might be expected, in this part, photovoltaics is dealt with primarily and there are smaller sections on photogalvanic, photoelec- trolytic, thermoelectric, thermoionic, thermomagnetic and dielectric gen- erators. Major topics in the photovoltalcs area include monocrystaUine, polycrystalline, amorphous, organic, induced-junction and meta l - insula tor- semiconductor photovoltaic cells as well as monolithic cell arrays, stacked and tandem cells, antireflection coatings and surfaces, and concentrators, coverings and housings for photovoltaic cells.

This section of the report is similar in concept and scope to Marshall Sittig's Solar Cells for Photovoltaic Generation of Electricity (Noyes Data Corporation, Park Ridge, NJ, 1979) which surveys U.S. patents issued be- tween 1970 and 1979. There is a certain amount of overlap between the publications, specifically in the listing of the U.S. patents issued between 1973 and 1979. Sittig's book is more complete in its listing in the first half of this period, while the present publication is more complete in the second half. It also has the advantage of including patent activity between 1979 and 1983. This advantage is especially noticeable in the amorphous silicon cell area. Whereas Sittig's book describes one patent in its section on amorphous silicon, the present publication describes closer to 30 with additional amor- phous cell patents described in its section on tandem cells.

The present report could have been improved by including Japanese patent activity in the survey although this is understandably a daunting task. The report includes in appendixes a valuable listing of patent docu- ments including patent title and applicant, earliest priority date and date of patent publication. Unfor tunately these are not indexed back to the loca- tion in the tex t where their contents are described. Sufficient information

© Elsevier Sequoia/Printed in The Netherlands

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is given in the text to work in the opposite direction and to locate pate~! document details in the appendixes. Nonetheless, it would have been useful even in this case to include more information in the text such as the names of inventors or patent applicant to allow the source of the work described to be more quickly identified by the reader.

Despite these areas where improvements may have been possible, the repor t more than adequately satisfies its stated aim of illustrating "how patent-based technological information can be used to assess the state of the art and to show trends in particular technologies using details of patenting activities". It also demonstrates that a great deal of technological informat ion is available only in the patent literature. It represents a valuable addit ion to the library of those seriously involved with the research into or the development of photovoltaic devices.

MARTIN GREEN