Hanergy’s MiaSolé, Solliance Achieve New Record Efficiency on Flexible Solar Cells

This new record efficiency was achieved as a result of the combined expertise of both the companies i.e. MiaSolé’s specialisation in copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) development and manufacturing; and Solliance expertness in the area of perovskite technology.

Just nine months after the presentation of first record breaking flexible solar cell, MiaSolé Hi-Tech Corp jointly with European Solliance Solar Research has achieved a new world record power conversion efficiency of 23 percent on flexible solar cell.

This new record efficiency was achived as a result of the combined expertise of both the companies i.e. MiaSolé’s specialisation in copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) development and manufacturing; and Solliance expertness in the area of perovskite technology.

MiaSolé Hi-Tech Corp is the US-based subsidiary of Hanergy Thin Film Power Group, world’s largest thin-film power solution company.

A solar cell combines 2 thin-film solar cell technologies into a tandem solar cell stack i.e. a top flexible semi-transparent perovskite solar cell with a bottom flexible CIGS cell.

To get maximum conversion efficiencies, the absorption properties of top perovskite cell and of the bottom CIGS cell should be tuned to complement each other, the company said in a statement.

MiaSolé developed CIGS bottom cell is used in this tandem architecture. This cell is based on a commercially available high efficiency flexible solar cell technology fabricated on lightweight stainless-steel foil using a proprietary high throughput roll-to-cell sputtering process.

Recently, the company has reported a flexible large area certified module efficiency of 17.44 percent with an active area of 1.08 m2.

Commenting on the achievement, Solliance, Program Manager for Perovskite-based Solar Cells, Sjoerd Veenstra said, “a highly efficient flexible hybrid solar cell is an outlook on how perovskite solar cell technology can innovate the established solar technology, leading to a different application area with improved performance.”

“This significant tandem cell performance gain was achieved through process improvements in the bottom CIGS cell,” said Dmitry Poplavskyy, director of technology, MiaSolé Hi-Tech.

Poplavskyy further added that, “these process changes, implemented by MiaSolé, enable high efficiency CIGS cells with the spectral response better matched to the top perovskite cell. Further improvements in spectral matching as well as overall higher CIGS cell efficiency are expected to push the tandem architecture well beyond 23 percent.”