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Ascent Solar Technologies, Inc. ("Ascent Solar"), a developer of state-of-the-art, thin-film photovoltaic materials, announced today that the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has selected Ascent Solar for a Broad Agency Announcement award to develop high-performance thin-film multijunction photovoltaics (PV) based on Ascent Solar's flexible monolithically integrated CIGS technology. The new contract represents approximately $1.5 million in value over a 48-month period.
Since 1995, AFRL has provided funding for the development of the flexible CIGS at ITN Energy Systems, Inc. and now at Ascent Solar, including the development of aspects of future multijunction devices. Multijunction solar cells are two or more solar cells in a stack, where each solar cell collects a specific portion of the solar spectrum. The top cell in this configuration collects the blue portion of the solar spectrum, the bottom cell collects the red portion of the spectrum, and cells in between collect the rest of the visible spectrum. This type of technology can result in higher performance and lower losses when translating from the small-area cell level to monolithically integrated modules.
Ascent Solar Chief Technical Officer Dr. Joseph Armstrong stated, "We are excited about this new opportunity to work with AFRL. The program will support the continued development of our new multijunction technology platform from which we intend to proceed with multijunction devices and prototype module demonstrations. Efficient conversion of the sun's energy is very critical to space and near-space applications, in that higher efficiencies correlate to smaller, lighter-weight solar arrays, and significantly lower launch cost. The technology that we intend to develop under this new program should also benefit our terrestrial building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) applications, such as roofing tiles and building facades that operate at elevated temperatures."
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