With an efficiency of 20.1%, scientists at the Zentrum für Sonnenenergie-und Wasserstoff-Forschung Baden-Württemberg, Germany (Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research, ZSW) have achieved a new success in striving to increase the electricity yield of solar cells. The Stuttgart researchers produced thin-film solar cells with a top efficiency of 20.3%.
With this performance, they exceed their own world record and bring CIGS thin-film efficiency levels to within just 0.1% of that of multi-crystalline solar cells which still dominate the market.
The new record-breaking solar cells from ZSW are 0.5 square centimetres in diameter and the semi-conducting CIGS layer and the contact layers have a total thickness of only four thousandths of a millimeter, making them 50 times thinner than standard silicon cells. This saves materials and costs and combined with the new efficiency results should significantly improve the cost-effectiveness of CIGS thin-film photovoltaics in coming years.
CIGS cells have received a lot of attention in recent years because of their high efficiency. However, scaling up the technology to make it commercially viable has proved difficult because of the complexity of manufacturing, which has led to many companies investing in new manufacturing lines and using up copious amounts of capital with little returns to date.
Over the next few years, however, ZSW researchers are confident that the efficiency of the relatively low-priced CIGS thin-film solar modules will rise from about 11% to about 15%, adding to their commercially viability.
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