World’s Highest Efficiency in Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells
22 May 2009 | Green Technology | 2 Comments
The majority of silicon wafers used for solar cells are Czochralski(CZ) single crystalline and directional solidification, or cast, multicrystalline (mc) material.The split between the two types of wafer is presently about 55% mc-Si and 45% CZ-Si.Until 1995 CZ wafers represented 60% of the substrates used by industry and mc-Si wafers around 25%.The fast scale up of commercially available multicrystalline wafers changed the picture rapidly.The remained of the silicon substrates used by the industry are non-wafered sheets or ribbons that are of different types and have recently gained significant production figures, following long development phases.
Sanyo Electric Co. recently announced that they have surpassed the old record, creating the world’s highest efficiency silicon solar cells.HIT solar cells are 23% more efficient than normal solar cells, which means that Sanyo Electric Co. increased rate of solar cell efficiency by 0.7%.The secret of this improvement was based on reduction in optical absorption loss.
“The company stated that their new HIT solar cells consists of a single thins layer of a crystalline silicon sandwiched in between two layers of high quality ultra-thin amorphous silicon layers. These layers improve the quality of the heterojunction and also allow more sunlight to hit the power generating silicon surface. Other than this, a reduction in resistance loss also allowed Sanyo to make the cells highly efficient.” – www.ecofriend.org
Tags: Green Technology, Science, solar cell, Solar Energy
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Hmmmm….did not know sanyo was into solars. Is there solar divison divided under a different stock symbol. They could raise some good money it they were. Good article.