Multijunction solar cell reaches record 36.1% efficiency
Silicon 'TOPCon' solar cell combines GaInP and GaInAsP and a metal/polymer nanocoating
A team of researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Research ISE in Germany and the Dutch NWO-Institute AMOLF have made a multijunction solar cell with an efficiency of 36.1 percent, the highest efficiency ever reached for a solar cell based on silicon.
The team presented the new record at the European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference (EU PVSEC) in Lisbon on September 21, 2023. The research project was funded through the Fraunhofer ICON program.
The new record combines a 'silicon TOPCon' solar cell (a new high-efficiency cell design developed at Fraunhofer ISE), with two semiconductor layers composed of GaInP and GaInAsP also developed at Fraunhofer ISE. The layer stack is then coated with a specially designed metal/polymer nanocoating designed at AMOLF and fabricated jointly at AMOLF and Fraunhofer ISE. The back reflector improves the trapping of light inside the solar cell, which enables the efficiency to be increased for the first time beyond 36 percent.
New applications
These solar cells are currently more expensive to fabricate than conventional silicon solar cells, which reach efficiencies of up to 27 percent. However, the very high efficiency of the multijunction cell is a great benefit for applications where the available space is limited and a large amount of solar power must be generated within a small area. Applications are foreseen in solar-powered electric cars, consumer products, and drones, for example. The new light management design is also applicable in other types of solar cells, such as silicon-perovskite multijunction solar cells, for example.
Albert Polman, who led the AMOLF-part of the project, reports: “This new record is the result of a unique collaboration between Fraunhofer ISE and AMOLF that started in 2020. The Fraunhofer team is world-renowned for the fabrication of ultra-high efficiency solar cells based on silicon and III-V semiconductors such as GaInP or GaAs. The AMOLF team has built up many years of experience in optimising the management of light in solar cells. In this project, we brought this knowledge together, with this unique result. The solar cells have traveled between Freiburg and Amsterdam for the different processing steps, in this way building up the full solar cell.”
Frank Dimroth from Fraunhofer ISE adds: “It is a great achievement of the researchers in both teams to combine the best processes available to jointly realize a new efficiency record for a silicon-basedmultijunction solar cell. Both, the new back reflector from AMOLF and the improved GaInAsP middle cell from Fraunhofer contributed to this outstanding result.”
References
'Nano-patterned back-reflector with engineered near-field/far-field light scattering for enhanced light trapping in silicon-based multi-junction solar cells' by A. Cordaro et al; ArXiv2305.16462
'Wafer-bonded two-terminal III-V//Si triple-junction solar cell with power conversion efficiency of 36.1 % at AM1.5g' by P. Schygulla teal: Proc. EUPVSEC Conference, Lisbon, Progr. Photovolt. (2023)
