News Article
NREL and EPIR Develop CdTe Solar Cell with 15.2% Efficiency
The solar cells were fabricated using inexpensive commercial TEC-series glass substrates as opposed to technical-grade glass.
EPIR Technologies has repeatedly fabricated high efficiency polycrystalline cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar cells on commercial glass substrates.
According to Siva Sivananthan, founder and CEO of EPIR Technologies, “EPIR has been collaborating closely with a team of scientists from National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Together we developed a CdTe solar cell with a maximum of 15.2% efficiency.” Sivananthan added, “The combination of EPIR’s expertise in CdTe materials and NREL’s expertise in CdTe solar cell device technology has empowered us to achieve these excellent results in a short timeframe.”
According to Chollada Gilmore, EPIR’s CdTe Solar Cell Technical Lead, “Our champion cell efficiency was officially verified by NREL at 15.2 % efficiency. The high efficiency was driven by a fill factor of 77.6%, which is one of the highest fill factor values ever recorded for this type of solar cell. These results are significant because our solar cells were fabricated using inexpensive commercial TEC-series glass substrates as opposed to technical-grade glass which is commonly used in champion cell fabrication.”
Timothy Coutts, NREL Fellow Emeritus and founder of the Device Development Group at NREL, stated, “This achievement elevates EPIR to the very small group of solar companies and research facilities that have reproducibly fabricated CdTe solar cells with greater than 15% efficiency. This clearly validates EPIR’s expertise in CdTe solar cell growth and fabrication.”
Timothy Gessert, Principal Scientist and Group Manager of the NREL CdTe Research Group stated, “This is an important advancement for CdTe thin-film PV technology because it not only surpasses the previous best result that was published for commercial soda-lime glass by a clear margin (14.4% was the previous best result on commercial soda-lime glass), but all the layers incorporated into this new device structure are consistent with present commercial manufacturing processes.”
