Academia Sinica today announced a breakthrough in next-generation solar cell technology that is about 30 percent more efficient than currently available products.
Taiwan has limited land to dedicate to solar energy generation, which makes increasing efficiency vital, Academia Sinica said in a news release.
The most efficient silicon-based solar cells currently available are about 22 to 24 percent efficient, it said.
Photo courtesy of Academia Sinica
To achieve more than 31 percent efficiency, researchers used multi-junction and stacked designs of mineral films combined with the silicon solar cells, it said.
Under Academia Sinica President James Liao’s (廖俊智) direction, the institute invited researchers from around Taiwan to form a team to research stacked solar cell technology, said Chu Chih-wei (朱治偉), a researcher at the institute’s Center for Sustainability Science.
The team has members from the institute, National Cheng Kung University, National Tsing Hua University and Ming Chi University of Technology, among others, the news release said.
With this technology, Taiwan’s solar power generation capacity can increase without dedicating more land to it, Liao said.
Although the cells are still small-scale, they prove Taiwan’s ability to independently develop and research the technology, researcher Guo Tzung-fang (郭宗枋) said.
They also have potential for commercial applications, Guo added.
The cells have received significant attention for being made out of common materials, making them cheap to produce, highly efficient and recyclable, said professor Wei Tzu-chien (衛子健) from National Tsing Hua University’s Department of Chemical Engineering.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS