New Thin Film Photovoltaic World Record announced on Conference in Berlin
Advanced analytics for both thin film technologies with silicon as well as CIGS: Beside highly developed deposition tools, a comprehensive infrastructure was set up at PVcomB. Here, a glass substrate is loaded into a multi-chamber deposition tool where it will be deposited with only a few micrometers of silicon layers forming finally the active part a solar cell.
Foto: Berlin Partner für Wirtschaft und Technologie / Monique Wüstenhagen
The 5th International Workshop on CIGS Solar Cell Technology organized bei Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) started with a bang. Katsumi Kushiya by the Japanese company Solar Frontier presented the approximately 100 participants a new world record conversion efficiency for thin-film-photovoltaic technologies. Their new thin-film CIGS cells can convert 20.9 percent of the incident sunlight into electrical energy beating the previous Solar Frontier- record of 19.7 percent conversion efficiency. The previous best value for all thin-film photovoltaic technologies was 20.8 percent.
Solar Frontier has achieved this in a joint research with the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO). As the company reported the new world record was achieved on a 0.5 cm2 solar CIGS cell. The CIGS layer was deposited on a glass substrate using a sputtering-selenization formation method - a similiar technology is also used by HZBs Photovoltaic Cpmpetence Centre (PVcomB) for coating its 30 by 30 cm2 modules.
Prof. Dr. Rutger Schlatmann, head of PVcomB and organizer of the workshop is pleased with the message: "Congratulations to Solar Frontier. We are happy, that they have chosen our workshop to announce this great result. This shows that the event is well established in the thin film community and has a very good reputation."
The workshop IW CIGSTech continues the previous Thin Film Week, traditionally held in April in Berlin-Adlershof. The PVcomB organise the workshop annually within its Programme "Advanced Research and Innovation in the New States" funded by the federal government and the State of Berlin.
- Bernd Rech elected to the BR50 Board of DirectorsThe Scientific Director at Helmholt-Zentrum Berlin is the new face behind the "Natural Sciences" unit at Berlin Research 50 (BR50). Following the election in December 2025, the constituent meeting of the new BR50 Board of Directors took place on 22 January 2026.
Its members are Michael Hintermüller (Weierstrass Institute, WIAS), Noa K. Ha (German Centre for Integration and Migration Research, DeZIM), Volker Haucke (Leibniz Research Institute for Molecular Pharmacology, FMP), Uta Bielfeldt (German Rheumatism Research Centre Berlin, DRFZ) and Bernd Rech (HZB).
- A record year for our living lab for BIPVIn 2025, our solar facade in Berlin-Adlershof generated more electricity than in any of the previous four years of operation.
- HZB expert appointed chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Barcelona Research CentreProf. Dr. Susan Schorr has been appointed to the newly established Scientific Advisory Board of the Barcelona Research Centre in Multiscale Science and Engineering and elected as its chair.