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GOLDEN — The National Renewable Energy Laboratory says its scientists have developed a device that can convert a record 40.8 percent of the light that hits it into electricity.
NREL spokesman George Douglas says the new device still has room for improvement. Its design differs from that of a company whose device converted 40.7 percent of concentrated sunlight that hit it into electricity for the previous record.
The new inverted metamorphic triple-junction solar cell makes use of compositions of gallium indium phosphide and gallium indium aresenide to divide light into three parts that are absorbed by each of the solar cell’s three layers.
Douglas says it is thinner and lighter than the older device, which used a germanium wafer.
