Multicrystalline Silicon Solar Cell with 21.9 Percent Efficiency: Fraunhofer ISE Again Holds World Record

Fraunhofer ISE have produced a multicrystalline silicon solar cell with 21.9 percent efficiency, successfully bringing the world record back to Freiburg.

As in the years from 2004 to 2015, Fraunhofer ISE again holds the world’s record for multicrystalline silicon. The record solar cell consists of n-type high performance multicrystalline silicon, or HP mc-Si. Compared to p-type silicon, this material shows a higher tolerance to impurities, especially iron. The industrial production today uses multicrystalline p-type silicon material with average solar cell efficiencies of about 19 percent.

The new material and technology approaches applied by Fraunhofer ISE for the record cell have the potential to improve the efficiency of multicrystalline silicon even further in the near future. The cell has excellent antireflection properties; therefore the cell appears almost black with almost no detectable grain boundaries. The project is headed by Dr. Jan Benick, Team Leader of Innovative Clean Room Technologies for High Efficiency Silicon Solar Cells. He looks into the future: “Our goal is to develop an advanced cell technology for the n-type multicrystalline wafer that really demonstrates its full potential. The question is, how far can we get to closing the efficiency gap to monocrystalline material.”

https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/2017/multicrystalline-silicon-solar-cell-with-21-point-9-percent-efficiency-fraunhofer-ise-again-holds-world-record.html

© Photo Fraunhofer ISE