Development of Solar Cell with World’s Highest Conversion Efficiency by SHARP
Achieving the highest possible solar energy conversion efficiency is at the heart of any solar cell research and development effort, and sharp is no stranger at this. Sharp started the development of its first solar cell back in 1967 by developing a solar cell for space application using single-crystal silicon. Much later on the company began its R&D on triple-junction compound solar cell to further improve efficiency, reduce weight, and increase durability of solar cells which was targeted for space applications. Through this effort in 2003 Sharp achieved 31.5% conversion efficiency. By today’s announcement using the same solar cell structure Sharp at least at the experimental level has achieved a 35.8% conversion efficiency rate. Read more
Development of Ultra thin HIT Solar Cell by SANYO
Sanyo Electric made an announcement today on development of Ultra thin HIT (Heterojunction with Intrinsic Thin-layer) solar cell which by the way is Sanyo’s originally developed technology. The HIT is a hybrid model combining a crystalline silicon substrate and an amorphous silicon thin film. The first announcement on such HIT solar cell by Sanyo was back in May of this year achieving a world’s highest conversion efficiency of 23%. Well this time the conversion efficiency is at 22.8% but the cell thickness is 98?m which is half the thickness of the previous model. This is an important achievement since by reducing the thickness of the silicon wafer in order to save resources and reduce cost would result in less optical absorption which causes the energy conversion efficiency to drop. Read more
Construction of Solar Car using Sharp’s Solar Cell
The construction of Tokai University’s solar car has been finally completed. The solar car has been equipped with Sharp’s solar cells featuring the highest conversion efficiency in the world. The solar vehicle will participate in the Global Green Challenge one of the largest solar car races in the world which will be held from October 24th to 31st 2009. The Sharp solar cells on this vehicle have an output of 1.8 kW and a cell conversion efficiency of 30% world’s highest. Read more
The world highest efficiency organic thin film solar cell ever recorded
Toray industries a leading Japanese manufacturing company in the areas of fibers, textiles, plastics to name a few, made an announcement on the development of new polymer donor material for a thin film solar cells with conversion efficiency of 5.5% the highest efficiency that has been announced up to now. Toray is planning to increase the conversion efficiency of this new material by as much as 7% before its use in a commercialized organic thin film solar cell sometimes by 2015. Read more
TFT based solar cell by Mitsubishi
Mitsubishi chemical has unveiled its organic based solar cell during the PV Expo in Tokyo. The newly developed solar cell is based on organic semiconductor material that Mitsubishi developed for TFTs back in 2006. The thin film solar cell uses a fullerene derivative for the N-Type material and Mitsubishi’s own developed material “benzoporphyrin (BP)” for the p-type material which was developed for the material of deriver TFTs for OLED and electronic paper. Read more
Producing Carbon Nanotube and Hydrogen from animal’s waste
This goes without say that one man’s waste is another man’s treasure. But this technology really put it into a practice sense. A Japanese firm by the name of Japan Eco Carbon Inc. has started production and sale of production plant capable of producing carbon nanotube otherwise known as CNT and hydrogen from methane produced from animal’s waste without generating any CO2. Read more
