New chip technology doubles efficiency of solar cells – German Economic News

A French chip maker has developed a method which can be produced with an efficiency of 46 percent solar cells. To this end, the company uses a technique that is actually intended for the manufacture of microchips. So therefore could be twice as much solar energy into electricity than conventional solar cells.

Use the technique for chip manufacturing succeeded Soitec for solar cells EFFICIENCY of 46 percent. (Photo: AP)

A French chip maker has developed a method, standard with the can be produced with a record-breaking efficiency of 46 percent solar cells . For this, the company is leveraging called Soitec just the technology that was originally designed for the production of microchips.

This could convert more than twice as much sunlight into electricity than conventional solar cells . Their efficiencies are far less than 20 percent. The efficiency of a solar cell indicates how much of the available energy is converted by the solar cell, module or of investing in solar power.

The fact that a already established production methods can be used, could also be kept low production costs. As a result, the production of super-efficient cells is worthwhile despite actually quite complicated manufacturing process, reports the MIT magazine Technology Review

In the last few years have therefore already reduced the cost of solar power by over 80 percent, mainly because companies have found cheaper methods for producing conventional silicon solar cells.

Soitec is an attempt which instead of several companies the cost of solar cells with increased efficiency decrease. fewer cells are required to produce the same amount of power. This reduces the installation costs, which account for more than half the cost of solar power. The challenge is therefore to achieve a higher efficiency without increasing the cost of production of the cells significantly.

Normal solar cells use a semiconductor to convert sunlight into electricity. The Soitec cells, however, have four semiconductor , which aim each on a different part of the solar spectrum.

The combination of several semiconductor in a solar cell, a known idea that so far, however, difficult in the practice was implemented. To use the process from the Microchip Technology again, could therefore crucial advantage bring , and to produce semiconductors stable and low

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