Printing solar cells for solar panels as printing photos

Solar cell printing technology was developed by scientists at Oregon State University, USA. They tried to cut costs to make solar panels using the technology used in inkjet printers to print solar cells.

The material used is often referred to as CIGS, which is a combination of materials such as copper, indium, gallium and selenium also called chalcopyrite. Types of materials are known to better efficiency than silicon to make solar panels today.

The technology is claimed to reach 5 percent efficiency of solar panel by print chalcopyrite solar cells on the surface. But researchers have to increase again the value of this efficiency by 12 percent to be commercialized. The technology can be cheaper because no material is wasted due to evaporation process in the step of making solar cells for solar panels.

Highest solar panel efficiency achieved by Alta Devices

Technology to achieve the highest solar panel efficiency in converting solar energy into electrical energy continues to grow, so it is expected to compete with fossil energy use that will diminishing supply as well as environmental unfriendly.

Recently, new efficiency record for solar panels has reached 27.6 percent achieved by Alta Devices. They use gallium arsenide solar panels that capable of catching up to 28.2 percent of sunlight that managed to achieve higher efficiency than the previous record of 26.4 percent, according to data from NREL.

To achieve the record efficiency, the company developed wafer-style solar panels are considered to have higher efficiency opportunities during bright sun and directly on solar panel. As one of the solar panel manufacturer, Alta Devices prefer to use wafer-style solar panels compared to thin-film solar cells which developed by other companies. But it also depends on the environmental conditions to install the solar panel itself. That's because the thin-film solar panels more efficient in areas that are not so abundant sunlight or when the sun is not in the position of 90 degree angle.