THIN FILM: Recently, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) announced that they have moved closer to creating a thin-film solar cell that can compete with the efficiency of the more common silicon-based solar cell. The CIGS thin-film solar cell recently reached 19.9 percent efficiency in testing at the lab, setting a new world record, as the NREL revealed on March 24th 2008.
CPV: While concentrator-based PV technologies have been around since the 1970s, they have received renewed interest in recent times. With very high concentrations, they have the potential to offer solar electricity for large-scale power generation, as long as the temperature of the cells can be kept low, and cheap and efficient optics can be developed for concentrating the light to very high levels. IBM said it developed a concentrator photovoltaics (CPV) cooling technology that can cool a solar cell from greater than 1,600 degrees Celsius to 85 C. IBM’s CPV technology uses a thin layer of a liquid metal made of a gallium and indium compound that is applied between the chip and a cooling block. These thermal interface layers transfer the heat from the chip to the cooling block so that the chip temperature can be kept low.
