IBM sets world record for PV energy conversion efficiency
IBM sets world record for photovoltaic energy conversion efficiency with earth-abundant materials
Energy from the sun reaching the earth’s surface amounts to several thousand times our global consumption of electricity. Yet electricity from photovoltaic (PV) solar cells currently contributes significantly less than one percent of worldwide production. Of the numerous existing PV technologies, none so far have combined the virtues of being highly efficient, cheaply scalable and made with abundantly available materials.
IBM’s Materials Science team has partnered with Solar Frontier, Tokyo Ohka Kogyo (TOK) and DelSolar to develop an efficient and affordable PV cell made of abundant natural materials. So far, the tests of our Cu2ZnSn(S,Se)4 (made of readily available copper, zinc, and tin, and referred to as CZTS) thin-film devices have achieved a world-record PV solar-to-electric power conversion efficiency of 11.1 percent (10 percent better than any previous reports) for this class of semiconductors. And it can be manufactured by simple ink-based techniques such as printing or casting.
What makes CZTS better …