Golden (CO) - Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DoE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) claim to have set a new world record in solar cell efficiency: A new photovoltaic device can convert 40.8% of the light it is exposed to into electricity – which is more than twice as much as average solar cells can achieve today.

Improving the efficiency of solar cells is a key research area in the photovoltaic segment, as current mas market solar cells are converting less than 20% of sunlight into electricity, but high-end solar cells made by Boeing-Spectrolab and used by the DoE and NASA have been approaching 40%. A new material now allowed the NREL to increase the efficiency by a few more percentage points.

Instead of using a germanium wafer as the bottom junction of the device, the new design uses compositions of gallium indium phosphide and gallium indium arsenide to split the solar spectrum into three equal parts that are absorbed by each of the cell's three junctions for higher potential efficiencies. This new “inverted metamorphic triple-junction solar cell” design proved to be highly effective, hitting an efficiency of 40.8% under concentrated light of 326 suns (326 times the amount of light that hits Earth on a sunny day.)  

The NREL said that the solar cell is “extremely thin and light and represents a new class of solar cells with advantages in performance, design, operation and cost.” Just don’t expect this device to become available for the roof of your home or a future Toyota Prius anytime soon: According to the NREL, the solar cell technology will be targeting the space satellite market as well as photovoltaic arrays which are typically sued by solar cell power plants and use lenses or mirrors to focus sunlight onto the solar cells.

It may take some time until consumers will see similarly efficient solar cells. There are research projects that claim to increase solar cell efficiency with relatively simple enhancements above 23% and nano-flakes may improve this value to 30% at some point. For the near future, solar cell efficiency enhancements such as a new technology from National Semiconductor could have an impact on solar cells and further out we hope that nanoantennas may complement solar cells to convert created heat into electricity.

Great, but...

Aug 15, 2008 10:24     

...I saw elsewhere that the previous record, set about a year ago, was 40.7%. A 0.1% increase is not exactly groundbreaking, I wonder what the error margin was in the results. If we can get mass produced solar cells close to 40% efficiency though, that would be fantastic.
Jo-mo report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +3

same old story

Aug 15, 2008 10:31     

Wonderful news: "we can double your solar cell efficiency!......but you won't be getting it." Still, I suppose unmarketable R&D is better than no R&D at all.
tzaylor report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +11

Cost?

Aug 15, 2008 10:43     

Problem is that if the buy in costs are too high then consumers would stick with mainstream solar cells. Still, it is awesome that they set a new record.
Dr. Bot report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Give us a better number!

Aug 15, 2008 14:01     

This number is useless. When they start showing the time it will take to produce an amount of electric power to equal the cost of the purchase of the cells in the amount needed for typical home use, and comparing solar cells in that way, we'll have a point of reference that makes sense. If you could easily see that they'd pay themselves off in a year for the typical househould, wouldn't they be worth buying?

JR report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +2

I'll take fossil fuel thank you

Aug 15, 2008 16:13     

Seems like there's a story every week about solar power. As a matter of fact I've been reading about solar and hydrogen since I was in second grade 40 years ago and we seem no closer to actually using it for anything other than calculators.
J. Doe report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Why would a power plant sue an array?

Aug 15, 2008 18:37     

photovoltaic arrays which are typically SUED by solar cell power plants ?????
Jim L report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Price/performance ratio is what matter

Aug 16, 2008 00:35     

Fire this scientist.
nofubu report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

module maker

Aug 16, 2008 08:24     

Hey all you layman: next time ask where the 326 suns is coming from; I'll tell you, it's a high intensity lamp in a laboratory. Start asking the hard question, which is, okay, a concentrator system (with a lens), has a certain amount of light power hitting the window of the module, and the solar cell has a certain amount of electricity power coming out. What's the ratio? I'll tell you: it's no where near 40 %.

module maker report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Spelling correction

Aug 16, 2008 13:06     

You wrote "sued by power plants".. and I think it should read "used by power planets".
Matthew C. Richards report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +1

Re: Spelling correction

Aug 18, 2008 13:04     

Yeah, but how do we get the power from the "power planets" back to earth so we can use them?
Kyle report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Spelling Correction, correction...

Aug 18, 2008 13:21     

We could use a good "power planet" around here.. :-P "You wrote 'sued by power plants"... and I think it should read 'used by power planets'.... and I think that should read: used by power plants.
Jamie A. Martin report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0