Scientists from the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering have developed a record-efficient perovskite-CIGS tandem solar cell.
The new thin-film solar cells are made by spraying thin-layer perovskites on commercially available copper, indium, gallium and selenide (CIGS) solar cells. These two layers were designed by researchers at UCLA. The nanoscale interfaces are connected together. Their work is published in the 'Science' magazine.
The US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory confirmed a conversion efficiency of 22.4%.
The two-layer design improves the performance of existing CIGS solar cells by nearly 20% because the CIGS base layer itself converts sunlight into energy with an efficiency of 18.7%.
According to the researchers, the technology of spraying the perovskite layer can be easily and inexpensively integrated into existing solar cell production processes. Their next goal is to achieve a tandem cell efficiency of 30%.
