UK technology firm Quantasol has come up with specially tailored solar cells to help boost their efficiency.

The premise behind the invention is that there are different forms of light around the world – at the equator, the sun may be burning hot however at higher latitudes, the sunlight is a lot weaker. Partly this is because the atmosphere acts as a light filter so the light reaching the ground will vary from place to place, and will also vary according to different atmospheric conditions.

Quantasol is now using a solar cell which makes of use of gallium arsenide (GaAs) rather than silicon which most other solar cells use. GaAs solar cells have already been used in space successfully.

Quantasol take their solar cells and add indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) to tiny pores across the surface of the solar panel. Each of these pores can be tuned so that they absorb light at particular frequencies that aren’t being absorbed well by the rest of the GaAs cell. This means that the efficiency of the solar panel should increase because the InGaAs pores are able to absorb more of the light in the particular area.

In tests, Quantasol’s new solar cells have broken as 21 year old efficiency record for one type of solar cell. The peak efficiency was measures at 28.3 percent when light 500 times the strength of standard sunlight was shone at the solar panel. Although the result is just one-tenth of a percent higher than the previous record holder, the record has stood for a massive 21 years so it represents a good step forward in solar cell technology.

The main problem of using GaAs in cells instead of silicon is the cost – silicon is a much cheaper material. However Quantasol’s solar cells don’t become overloaded as quickly as silicon solar cells therefore smaller, more efficient cells can be built using Quantasol’s technology.

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