Towards The Industrialization Of Concentrator Solar Cells With Efficiencies Above 40

摘要

Ill-V Multi-junction solar cells provide today's highest photovoltaic conversion efficiencies and have entered the terrestrial market giving new drive to the concept of concentrator photovoltaics (CPV). Together with Fraunhofer ISE, AZUR SPACE has carried out intensive research regarding device architectures, material studies and processing. Continuous improvement of production processes at AZUR SPACE and the incorporation of a high bandgap top cell have recently led to concentrator cells with an average efficiency of 39.1% (500 x AM I .5d). The target for this structure is to achieve close to 40% efficiency after further optimization. Metamorphic cell structures will increase efficiencies to values above 40%. This paper summarizes the current production status of the 3C35 solar cell with efficiencies above 35% as well as the status of the 3C38 design with a lean production process and an average efficienciy of 38%. Furthermore the development of the 3C40 cell structure with high-bandgap top cell is introduced and first results on the transfer of the metamorphic cell design from Fraunhofer ISE to AZUR SPACE are presented.