CIGS

In an interview with pv magazine, Empa scientist Mirjana Dimitrievska explains that the CIGS photovoltaic technology, while promising for efficiency and flexible applications, faces persistent challenges in scaling lab-level performance to cost-effective, high-throughput industrial production, limiting its ability to compete with crystalline silicon. She also emphasizes that long-term stability, reliability, and material sustainability, rather than peak efficiency, are crucial for commercial viability, especially in niche markets like building-integrated and lightweight PV.

Researchers in Japan have developed an effective encapsulation with a PET front cover for copper indium gallium diselenide mini-modules. The lab devices withstood damp heat tests, retaining approximately 97 % of initial efficiency after 3,600 h.

The Dutch research institute’s highly automated research line offers customized, flexible solar semi-finished PV products to partners developing integrated PV applications.

Japan’s oil giant Idemitsu Kosan and U.S.-based Source Energy Company announced a collaboration to develop copper indium gallium-selenide solar modules and arrays for satellite and space applications.

The US-based developer of copper indium gallium selenide thin-film PV products said its modules will be tested without modifications by companies developing marine PV and power beaming applications.

Researchers in Europe are investigating semi-transparent solar windows, applying microfabrication technniques to both CIGS and perovskite devices, to overcome the view-impeding properties of earlier solar window concepts.

US-based Ascent Solar Technologies says its latest 30cm2 Titan solar module has a power density of 1,960 W/kg and is designed for space applications.

Swedish thin film solar specialist Midsummer announced the order of a SEK 143.5 million ($14.8 million) turnkey line with a capacity for 15 MW from an undisclosed Swedish industrial and defense group.

Germany’s Singulus Technologies will provide three of its physical vapor deposition (PVD) vacuum sputtering systems to Poland-based module manufacturer Roltec at a new plant that will produce copper, indium, gallium, and selenium (CIGS) cells on glass substrates.

South Korean researchers have fabricated a copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar cell with a 90 μm-thick UTG provided by South Korea’s Unique Technology Integral. The device uses a cadmium-free buffer layer made of zinc oxide and magnesium oxide, instead of cadmium sulfide.