NREL and UNSW raise two-junction solar cell efficiency record to 32.9%
The US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia have achieved record energy conversion efficiency for two-junction solar cells, creating a cell with two light-absorbing layers that converts 32.9% of sunlight into electricity (Myles A. Steiner et al, ‘High Efficiency Inverted GaAs and GaInP/GaAs Solar Cells With Strain‐Balanced GaInAs/GaAsP Quantum Wells’, Advanced Energy Materials, 13 December 2020).
Key to the cell’s design is a series of more than 150 ultrathin layers of alternating semiconductors that create quantum wells in the cell’s bottom absorber, allowing it to capture energy from a key range of the solar spectrum. While the new record only improves modestly on the previous 32.8% efficiency record, it is the first record-efficiency multi-junction solar cell to use a strain-balanced structure
21 December 2020
Australian researchers have contributed to yet another world record for solar conversion efficiency, with researchers from the University of New South Wales involved in the production of new ultra-high efficiency gallium arsenide solar cells.
In a research paper published in the journal Advanced Energy Materials, the team of researchers from the University of New South Wales and the US-based National Renewable Energy Laboratory detailed how using gallium arsenide based semiconductors, solar energy conversion efficiencies of 32.9 per cent were achieved.
In fact, the UNSW-NREL team successfully achieved two new world records for solar efficiency, having produced two configurations of gallium arsenide solar cells that achieved new conversion efficiency records, including a single-junction solar cell with a 27.2 per cent efficiency, and a ‘tandem’ solar cell design that sandwiches together too different configurations, with an efficiency of 32.9 per cent.
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