New World Record Efficiency For Thin Film Silicon Solar Cells A
10.7 percent conversion rate has been achieved using less than 2
micrometers of raw material 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). “Deep
understanding has been gained these last years in material
quality, efficient light-trapping and cell design, which in
combination with careful process optimizati