OREANDA-NEWS. Panasonic Corporation today announced that it has achieved a conversion efficiency of 25.6% (cell area: 143.7 cm2) in its HIT(r) solar cells, a major increase over the previous world record for crystalline silicon-based solar cells.

The previous record for the conversion efficiency of crystalline silicon-based solar cells of a practical size (100 cm? and over) was 24.7%, as announced by Panasonic in February 2013 (cell area: 101.8 cm?). The new record is 0.9 points higher and the first to break through the 25% barrier for practical size cells.

This new record is also an improvement of 0.6 points over the previous record for small area crystalline silicon-based solar cells (cell area: 4 cm?) of 25.0%.

The achievement of this new record was made possible by further development of Panasonic's proprietary heterojunction technology to realize the high conversion efficiency and superior high temperature properties of the company's HIT solar cells as well as adopting a back-contact solar cell structure, with the electrodes on the back of the solar cell, which allows the more efficient utilization of sunlight.