News

11 May 2009

 

NREL’s IMM solar cell wins federal technology transfer prize

The US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) of Golden, CO, USA has been named a winner of the 2009 Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer by the US Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) for Technology Transfer for the commercialization of federally funded research on inverted metamorphic multijunction (IMM) solar cells.

The original IMM cell was invented by Mark Wanlass of NREL’s Concentrating Photovoltaics (CPV) Group. In 2005, the design established a solar cell efficiency of 37.9% under concentrated light equal to 10 suns. Last August 2008, a modified version of the IMM design set a new record of 40.8% efficiency under 326 suns at NREL (since superseded by Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems achieving 41.1% under 454 suns using a metamorphic triple-junction solar cell).

Since 2005, NREL and Wanlass have worked with Emcore Corp of Albuquerque, NM, USA to develop a commercial version of the IMM cell under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA.)

Commercialized versions of the IMM cell are targeted at the space satellite market and for terrestrial use in concentrated photovoltaic arrays, which use lenses or mirrors to focus sunlight onto the solar cells.

Wanlass and Emcore’s director of R&D Paul Sharps received the award at a ceremony at the FLC national meeting in Charlotte, NC, USA. Sharing the award is NREL’s solar cell R&D team, including Jeff Carapella, Anna Duda, Daniel Friedman, John Gneiss, Sarah Kurtz, Bill McMahon, Tom Moriarty, Andrew Norman, Waldo Olivarez, Jerry Olson, Manuel Romero, Scott Ward, and Michelle Young.

See related item:

GreenVolts and NREL to commercialize IMM multi-junction solar cells

Search: NREL IMM solar cell CPV Emcore

Visit: www.nrel.gov/pv

Visit: www.federallabs.org/awards