New world record efficiency for thin film silicon solar cells
Tuesday, February 12, 2013 - 11:30
in Physics & Chemistry
The Photovoltaics-Laboratory (PV-Lab) of EPFL's Insitute of Microengineering (IMT), founded in 1984 by Prof. Arvind Shah and now headed by Prof. Christophe Ballif, is well known as a pioneer in the development of thin-film silicon solar cells, and as a precursor in the use of microcrystalline silicon as a photoactive material in thin-film silicon photovoltaic (TF-Si PV) devices. A remarkable step was achieved by the team led by Dr. Fanny Meillaud and Dr. Matthieu Despeisse with a new world record efficiency of 10.7% for a single-junction microcrystalline silicon solar cell, independently confirmed at Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE CalLab PV Cells) in Freiburg (Germany).