Cheaper and more efficient solar cells that produce electricity has been a goal for so many companies all over the world, that are researching in that field.
The EMPA, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, researchers have reached a new world record efficiency.
The same Laboratory has announced in 2010 that they reached a new record by reaching 17% , but now they reached a better record of 18.7% by using the flexible copper indium gallium (di) selenide (CIGS) solar cells on plastics.
The flexible CIGS solar cells have will help lowering the price of solar electricity because they are cheaper to produce. They are trying to bring that technology to market by FLISOM
Scientists at FLISOM, a start-up company who is scaling up and commercializing the technology, the Empa team made significant progress in low-temperature growth of CIGS layers yielding flexible CIGS cells that are ever more efficient, up from a record value of 14.1% in 2005 to the new “high score” of 18.7% for any type of flexible solar cell grown on polymer or metal foil. The latest improvements in cell efficiency were made possible through a reduction in recombination losses by improving the structural properties of the CIGS layer and the proprietary low-temperature deposition process for growing the layers as well as in situ doping with Na during the final stage. With these results, polymer films have for the first time proven to be superior to metal foils as a carrier substrate for achieving highest efficiency.