UNSW's ARC Photovoltaic Centre of Excellence has reasserted its leadership in solar cell technology by reporting the first silicon solar cell to achieve the milestone of 25 per cent efficiency.

The Centre already held the world record of 24.7 per cent for silicon solar cell efficiency. A revision of the international standard by which solar cells are measured delivered the 25 per cent record to the UNSW team led by Professors Martin Green and Stuart Wenham. The new world mark in converting incident sunlight into electricity was one of six new world records claimed by UNSW for its silicon solar technologies.

"Improvements in understanding atmospheric effects upon the colour content of sunlight led to a revision of the standard spectrum in April," said Professor Green. "The new spectrum has a higher energy content both down the blue end of the spectrum and at the opposite red end with, dare I say it, relatively less green."

The recalibration of the international standard, done by the International Electrochemical Commission in April, gave the biggest boost to UNSW technology while the measured efficiency of others made lesser gains. UNSW's world-leading silicon cell is now six per cent more efficient than the next-best technology, Professor Green said. The new record also inches the UNSW team closer to the 29 per cent theoretical maximum efficiency possible for first-generation silicon photovoltaic cells.

Dr Anita Ho-Baillie, who heads the Centre's high efficiency cell research effort, said the UNSW technology benefited greatly from the new spectrum "because our cells push the boundaries of response into the extremities of the spectrum".

"Blue light is absorbed strongly, very close to the cell surface where we go to great pains to make sure it is not wasted. Just the opposite, the red light is only weakly absorbed and we have to use special design features to trap it into the cell," she said.

The world-record holding cell was fabricated by former Centre researchers, Dr Jianhua Zhao and Dr Aihua Wang, who left the Centre to establish China Sunergy, one of the world's largest photovoltaic manufacturers.

UNSW’s technology transfer, NewSouth Innovations (NSi) Pty Ltd has in the past year signed licensing deals with some of the world’s fastest growing solar cell manufacturers in Asia.

In 2007 Nsi signed a lucrative deal with Taiwanese company, E-Ton Solar Tech, that includes a joint research program to develop two of UNSW's latest high efficiency solar cell technologies for commercial production. E-Ton is a rapidly growing solar cell manufacturer specialising in high performance products. By combining their existing technology with UNSW's research they hope to ensure they stay at the cutting edge of solar cell manufacture.

Nsi has also signed a licensing agreement with China Sun Energy to adapt UNSW's world-record holding PERL solar cell technology to suit large-scale commercial production.

Commercial enquiries, Neil Simpson, phone: +612 9385 6536, mobile: 0418 603 166. NSi media contact, Dan Gaffney, +61 411 156 015