Panasonic breaks 25% barrier in conversion efficiency for its HIT solar cells

Panasonic has achieved a world record in conversion efficiency for crystalline silicon-based solar cells. The company said on April 10 that it has seen conversion efficiency of 25.6% (cell area*: 143.7 cm²) in its HIT solar cells, which is a major increase over the previous world record, and one which has broken through the 25% barrier for practical sized cells.

Source: Panasonic.

The previous record** for the conversion efficiency of crystalline silicon-based solar cells of a practical size (100 cm² and over) was 24.7%. This record is also held by Panasonic, and occurred in February 2013 (cell area: 101.8 cm²). The new record the first to

This new record is also an improvement of 0.6 points over the previous record for small area crystalline silicon-based solar cells (cell area: 4 cm²) of 25%**,***.
 
Panasonic attributes the achievement to its proprietary heterojunction technology****, the superior high temperature properties of its HIT solar cells, as well as a design which allows the more efficient utilisation of sunlight.

The technical details can be found here. 

*The cell area is the area opened by the masks.
**As judged from the "Solar cell efficiency tables (version 43)" [Prog. Photovolt: Res. Appl. 2014; 22:1-9]
***University of New South Wales (Australia) (March 1999)
****Technology for junction formation required for solar cells that covers the silicon base surface with an amorphous silicon layer. The technology compensates for the many flaws around the silicon base surface area.