Collaboration for 20 percent efficient CIGS solar modules

• European solar panel makers have combined efforts with research centers to developed improved procedures for CIGS manufacturing. The venture codenamed SUCCESS aims at production line efficiency exceeding 20 percent for modules sized 30 cm x 30 cm

It has been a busy month for copper indium gallium selenide technology, together with Miasolé (an American branch of Hanergy) exceeding 18 percent performance for a flexible module in November, along with a Chinese-German venture establishing a fresh record for total solar module efficiency a couple of days back. 

And this tendency seems to continue through the year to come. A new project has been announced, targeted at an over-20-percent efficiency for 30 x 30 centimeter CIGS module. It is scheduled to be running during 3.5 years.

The project is supported by the European Union. It is a joint venture of such R&D leaders as Dutch Solliance, French IMN, German HZB, as well as top solar manufacturers SMIT (Netherlands) and Avancis (China).

Last year, Japanese Solar Frontier established the performance record at 23.35 percent for a 1 cm x 1 cm CIGS solar cell. The new project will concentrate on scaling the processes up to bigger devices. 

The team is going to study improving homogeneity of selenization procedure completed on SMIT's prototype manufacturing tools. As well it intends to start looking into post-deposition treatment methods by alkali metals for large-scale production.