![Solar cells - H. Mirhosseini Solar cells - H. Mirhosseini](/2520235/header_image-1437738056.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6ODQ4LCJmaWxlX2V4dGVuc2lvbiI6ImpwZyIsIm9ial9pZCI6MjUyMDIzNX0%3D--8c17152971abbe9c510c1e0ba46a0d9a0209b467)
Solar cells - H. Mirhosseini
ComCIGS II: Computational material science combined with experiments for the optimization of the efficiency of thin-film solar cells based on Cu(In,Ga)Se2.
Thin film solar cells based on CuIn1-xGaxSe2 (CIGS) are industrially manufactured in a large scale, being deployed worldwide due to their outstanding price/performance ratio, and because their device characteristics offers good performance in warm climates. Although efficiencies of up to 20.4% have been achieved at the laboratory scale, there is still considerable room for improvement both in the material properties and in the way how such devices are industrially mass produced.
A scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image for the cross section of a CIGS thin film is given in the header figure at the top of the page, showing the layer sequence from the top to bottom: MgF2 antireflective coating, ZnO:Al, i-ZnO, CdS buffer layer, CIGS absorber layer, MoSe2 and Mo, respectively.
![Figure 1: Part of our in-hose Linux based high-performance computing cluster together with the atomic model of CuIn5Se8 representing the thin film solar cell materials theoretically investigated by our group.](/2871645/original-1518441245.jpg?t=eyJ3aWR0aCI6MjQ2LCJvYmpfaWQiOjI4NzE2NDV9--610fc741362af6f3bda02a403118e3e0c281dbf7)
The main puorpose of the ComCIGS-II project funded by the German Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie is to improve the efficiency of thin film solar cells, which is a collaborative effort based on industrial and scientific partners: IBM Deutschland, Manz AG, Schott AG, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, and Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids.