The "world record", says the company, was achieved on a 30 x 30 cm² CIS (copper indium selenium), fully-encapsulated and framed Champion photovoltaic module. The results have been independently verified by TÜV Rheinland.
The announcement comes just months after the German photovoltaic manufacturer achieved a module efficiency of 15.5 percent.
"The renewed efficiency improvement can be traced back to the reduction of the layer thickness of the CIGSSe absorber by approximately 10 percent and an optimised in-line selenization process for the thinner absorbers," explained Franz Karg, CTO of Avancis.
"In addition, the P1 laser structuring was optimised and the structuring process between P1, P2 and P3 improved with the aim of further enlarging the active surface. The result was the achievement of an aperture efficiency of 15.8 percent."
It is not clear when Avancis hopes to produce these higher efficiency thin film photovoltaic modules. It will, however, be holding a lecture today at the EU PVSEC in Hamburg to discuss its findings, titled, "Towards module efficiencies of 16 percent with an improved CIGSSe device design ".
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