News

26 October 2010

 

XsunX boosts its CIGS PV cell efficiency to 15.09%

After just last week reporting the fabrication of thin-film photovoltaic (TFPV) cells based on its copper indium gallium diselenide CIGSolar technology that surpassed 14% energy conversion efficiency, XsunX Inc of Aliso Viejo, CA, USA says that it has reached 15.09% efficiency.

CEO Tom Djokovich says that achieving such high efficiencies in a relatively short period of time since the addition of thermal co-evaporation to its CIGS process underscores the firm’s assertion that small-area, co-evaporation production provides the best platform to deliver the highest-efficiency CIGS-based solar cells necessary to compete with, and potentially replace, silicon photovoltaic (PV) technologies. “While there is still work to accomplish, our recent and rapid gains in CIGS conversion efficiencies helps to substantiate our direction.”

Djokovich says that XsunX has taken a different path to the rest of the CIGS industry by focusing on identifying a large opportunity: the replacement of silicon within an existing multi-billion dollar supply chain. “We are not focused on trying to do the same thing better than the competition in the CIGS thin-film arena. We do not believe that there are significant gains to be achieved for the use of CIGS by simply spending more time trying to improve the limitations to current thin-film manufacturing techniques, or product design,” he stresses.

“That does not mean that we believe all other CIGS solutions will fail; quite to the contrary,” Djokovich continues. “Virtually all markets have numerous suppliers competing on different levels or within different segments of a market. The electronics industry, transportation, cars, and now solar provide examples of market segmentation. XsunX’s CIGSolar technology is working to address a very specific and large segment of the solar market by replacing silicon with lower-cost, high-efficiency CIGSolar cells.”

Deposition of the CIGS cell layer is conducted on full-size 125mm square substrates. XsunX’s test configurations used to measure efficiency results are identical to that used by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and the firm's AM1.5 solar simulator used for testing is calibrated daily using a reference solar cell calibrated by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), notes Djokovich.

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XsunX produces CIGSolar cells surpassing 14% efficiency

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