Meet the Most Efficient Solar Cell in the World - News
A team at Australia’s UNSW, led by Dr. Mark Keevers and Professor Martin Green, have developed a solar cell design capable of converting unfocused solar energy into electricity at a ground-breaking 34.5% efficiency.
What’s truly exceptional about this level of efficiency is that it’s being achieved when converting unfocused light. This means that the cell can attain 34.5% efficiency when converting light that’s naturally occurring. In the past, efficiency levels have been measured when taking only focused light into account, light that had been concentrated with the use of mirrors.
This cell is markedly more efficient, even when left to absorb light from a rooftop with no light concentration.
The key to the cells’ hyper-efficiency is the use of prisms. By using a prism, the module is capable of trapping light and bouncing it around. This allows more opportunity for light energy to be absorbed before it can escape by reflecting away. It splits the incoming light into four bands that are then caught by a four-junction solar cell system.
On one side of the prism is a silicon cell. On the other side is a triple-junction cell. The triple-junction cell has three layers: germanium, indium-gallium-phosphide, and indium-gallium-arsenide. Each of these targets a specific wavelength of sunlight, essentially catching as much energy as possible via a multi-tiered filtering system. Much of the energy that the triple-junction cell does not catch, i.e. infrared light, ends up caught by the silicon cell.
What’s truly exceptional about this level of efficiency is that it’s being achieved when converting unfocused light. This means that the cell can attain 34.5% efficiency when converting light that’s naturally occurring. In the past, efficiency levels have been measured when taking only focused light into account, light that had been concentrated with the use of mirrors.
This cell is markedly more efficient, even when left to absorb light from a rooftop with no light concentration.
The key to the cells’ hyper-efficiency is the use of prisms. By using a prism, the module is capable of trapping light and bouncing it around. This allows more opportunity for light energy to be absorbed before it can escape by reflecting away. It splits the incoming light into four bands that are then caught by a four-junction solar cell system.
On one side of the prism is a silicon cell. On the other side is a triple-junction cell. The triple-junction cell has three layers: germanium, indium-gallium-phosphide, and indium-gallium-arsenide. Each of these targets a specific wavelength of sunlight, essentially catching as much energy as possible via a multi-tiered filtering system. Much of the energy that the triple-junction cell does not catch, i.e. infrared light, ends up caught by the silicon cell.
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