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HelioVolt has presented figures at this week’s 33rd IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists’ Conference, demonstrating that its ‘FASST’ reactive transfer printing process has produced thin-film solar cells with 12.2 percent conversion efficiencies. The process took only six minutes, according to the company.

“In the lab, CIGS is already achieving the highest efficiencies of any thin film solar material. The challenge of course is transferring that efficiency to a high throughput, high yield, low cost process capable of delivering gigawatts worth of quality commercial product,” said Dr. BJ Stanbery, CEO and founder of HelioVolt. “We view these high-performance results as an indicator of FASST’s potential to meet that need. We’re already producing CIGS devices that are comparable with the highest efficiency thin film products on the market today, and we still see plenty of room to improve from here.”

HelioVolt’s 12.2 percent efficiency devices consisted of a CIGS photovoltaic thin-film layer applied to a glass substrate.