Concentrator Solar Cell Production Capability and Laboratory Results at Emcore

摘要

Manufacturing capability is discussed including production capacity for both solar cells and packaged receiver sub assemblies, and the flash test/sort/inspection tooling and methods that have allowed this production capacity. Laboratory solar cell development results are presented, including quadruple junction inverted metamorphic solar cells with an efficiency of 33.6% under AMO illumination at 28°C. Computational models are used to predict 43% conversion efficiency at 500 suns if this technology is successfully adapted to concentrating applications using the materials and processes now available. A temperature coefficient modeling study suggests that these four junction solar cells will degrade faster at elevated temperature than will comparable technology triple junction solar cells.