On September 22nd, a team of researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Research (Fraunhofer ISE) and the NWO-Institute Foundation AMOLF in Amsterdam announced the creation of a multi-junction solar cell with an efficiency of 36.1%. This sets a new record for silicon-based solar cells.
Albert Polman, who led the AMOLF portion of the project, stated, "This new record is the result of a unique collaboration between Fraunhofer ISE and AMOLF that began in 2020. The Fraunhofer ISE team is renowned in the industry for producing ultra-high-efficiency solar cells based on silicon and III-V semiconductors, like GaInP or GaAs. The AMOLF team has years of experience in optimizing solar cell light management. In this project, we combined the expertise of both teams to produce this multi-junction solar cell. Different processing steps of the solar cell were carried out in both Freiburg and Amsterdam to construct the complete solar cell."
Frank Dimroth of Fraunhofer ISE added, "Researchers from both teams integrated the best existing processes to jointly set a new efficiency record for silicon-based multi-junction solar cells. AMOLF's novel back reflector and Fraunhofer's improved GaInAsP middle cell both played a significant role in achieving this outstanding result."
