Towards 50% efficiency solar cells

Allen Barnett and Christiana Honsberg have a project under DARPA Very High Efficiency Solar Cell (VHESC) program on developing affordable portable solar cell battery chargers. They have integrated the optical design with the solar cell design leading to a new paradigm about how to make solar cells and how to use them. It is claimed that an advance of 2 percentage points is noteworthy in a field where gains of 0.2 percent are the norm and gains of one percent are seen as significant breakthroughs with regard to solar cell efficiency.They aim at a major step toward their goal of 50 percent efficiency of solar cell. The percentage will be a record under any circumstance, but it's particularly noteworthy because it's at low concentration, approximately 20 times magnification. The low profile and lack of moving parts mean that these devices easily could go on a laptop computer or a rooftop.