Collecting solar energy from both sides: New process boosts efficiency of bifacial CIGS thin film solar cell
Dübendorf, St. Gallen und Thun, 14.12.2022 - Bifacial thin film solar cells based on copper indium gallium diselenide or CIGS can collect solar energy from both their front and their rear side – and thus potentially yield more solar electricity than their conventional counterparts. So far, however, their fabrication has led to only modest energy conversion efficiencies. An Empa team has now developed a new low-temperature production process resulting in record efficiencies of 19.8% for front and 10.9% for rear illumination. Moreover, they also produced the first bifacial perovskite-CIGS tandem solar cell, as recently published in Nature Energy, opening up the possibility of even higher energy yields in future.