Stacking Layers Creates World's Most Effective Solar Cell

Sharp has unveiled what is being touted as the world's most efficient solar cell, able to convert 44.4 percent of incident light into energy.

The cell achieves its high efficiency by focusing sunlight through a lens-based concentrator system onto a stack of three photo-absorption layers. The lowest level of the stack is made from indium gallium arsenide, an infrared detector. Sharp also increased the efficiency of the cell by widening the effective concentrator surface and ensuring the width stayed the same at the interface of the connecting concentrator cell and electrodes.

Compound solar cells have been used primarily on satellites, but Sharp hopes that their new development will make the solar cells more feasible for on-earth applications.