Tokyo, Japan – Electronics giant Sanyo says it has broken its own world record for solar cell efficiency with a new type of crystalline silicon-type solar cells, achieving an efficiency of 23 per cent.
The increase in the solar cell conversion efficiency is reportedly accompanied by ‘significant’ advances in lowering the production cost of the photovoltaic system and the reduction in the use of raw materials such as silicon.
The HIT (Heterojunction with Intrinsic Thin layer) solar cell is composed of a single thin crystalline silicon wafer sandwiched by ultra-thin amorphous silicon layers.
The use of a lower-resistance electrode material for use in the grid electrode and a higher-aspect ratio through improving printing technology, leading to a success in reduction of resistance loss when an electric current flows through the grid electrode. Sanyo has also improved the quality of the HIT solar cell junction through depositing a higher quality a-Si layer over the c-Si substrate while protecting the c-Si surface from being damaged.
Sanyo also tells us it expanding its solar business, based on its ‘Think GAIA’ campaign, which aims ‘to realize a clean energy society’.
