Scientist Myles Steiner has announced that The Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has set a new world record at 31.1% for a two-junction solar cell. The research team at NREL beat Alta Devices’ previous record by 0.3%.

The new solar cell consists of a layer of gallium indium phosphide on a gallium arsenide cell. Bilayer anti-reflective coating sits on the top of the cell and a reflective gold contact layer is attached to the bottom. In other words, far more costly materials than what we currently use in the highest-efficiency crystalline-based solar panels.

Read all about Solar cells here.

NREL’s latest chart of best research-cell efficiencies (up-to-date with the new world record) can be found here.

The new record will likely be beaten in short time. NREL is determined to get closer to the 48% efficiency goal set by Department of Energy’s F-PACE project.

Although the solar market is currently dominated by different types of crystalline silicon (90%), scientists see a lot of opportunity in other materials. Multi-junction solar cells are currently the preferred type of solar cell for applications in space. High efficiency goes hand-in-hand with space-efficiency (surface) and is therefore of higher importance than costs.

There’s a lot of things happening in the solar industry nowadays. Recently Sharp announced that they have created the most efficient solar cell to date, with an incredible 44.4% efficiency rate.

Whether or not we will ever see multi-junction solar cells in widespread use here on earth remains to see. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to follow NREL as they get closer and closer to 48%, and keep pushing the threshold of what is possible with photovoltaic technology.

This article is written by Mathias Maehlum. He is currently doing masters in energy and environmental engineering at NTNU in Norway. He also runs EnergyInformative.org, a site that focuses on informing and promoting the use of clean, renewable energy technologies and increased energy efficiency.