News Article
XsunX’s CIGSolar Device Achieves 15.09% Conversion Efficiency
The firm says it has taken a different path to the rest of the CIGS industry by focusing on replacing the multi-billion dollar supply chain of silicon photovoltaic (PV) technologies with its CIGSolar modules.
XsunX, a developer of advanced, thin-film photovoltaic (TFPV) solar cell technologies and manufacturing processes, has achievedCIGS conversion efficiency of 15.09%.
Only aweek ago XsunX reported successfully fabricating cell devices based upon the Company’s CIGSolar technology that surpassed 14 % conversion efficiency.
The firm says that achieving these high efficiencies in the relatively short period of time since the addition of thermal co-evaporation to its CIGS process underscores its assertion that small-area, co-evaporation production provides the best platform to deliver the highest efficiency CIGS based solar cells necessary to compete with, and potentially replace, silicon photovoltaic (PV) technologies.
XsunX is very excited with these results and its next goal is to deliver a better manufacturing solution and use for CIGS. The firm says it has taken a different path to the rest of the CIGS industry by focusing on identifying a large opportunity: the replacement of silicon within an existing multi-billion dollar supply chain.
The firm says it is not focused on trying to do the same thing better than the competition in the CIGS thin-film arena as it does not believe that there are significant gains to be achieved for the use of CIGS by simply spending more time trying to improve the limitations to current thin-film manufacturing techniques, or product design.
The firm stresses it does not believe all other CIGS solutions will fail, and that virtually all markets have numerous suppliers competing on different levels or within different segments of a market. The electronics industry, transportation, cars, and now solar provide examples of market segmentation. XsunX’s CIGSolar technology is working to address a very specific and large segment of the solar market by replacing silicon with lower cost high efficiency CIGSolar cells.
Deposition of the CIGS cell layer is conducted on full size 125 mm square substrates. Test configurations used to measure efficiency results are identical to that used by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and its AM1.5 solar simulator used for testing is calibrated daily using a reference solar cell calibrated by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
