Effective solar cells and sensitive bioanalysis

This release is available in German.

		IMAGE: This is Marc Steiner from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. Click here for more information.

The efficiency factor of solar cells is crucial for the success of generating electricity from sunlight. Systems in which light is concentrated 400-fold through lenses onto solar cells are proving to be particularly advantageous. This concentrator technology enables expensive semi-conductor material to be replaced with cheaper lens systems, and greater efficiency to be achieved. In his thesis, physicist Marc Steiner from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Freiburg presented a way of increasing the efficiency of these concentrator solar cells even more. The contacting of the semi-conductor layers plays a crucial role here, and Marc Steiner's new simulation program optimizes the structure and configuration of the metallic contact fingers. These calculations yielded unprecedented efficiency factors for concentrator solar cells. Marc Steiner will be awarded the 2nd Hugo Geiger Prize for his thesis "Minimization of serial resistance losses in III-V solar cells with the aid of a SPICE network simulation".