6 layer solar cell: 47% efficient!

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-04-six-junction-solar-cell-world-efficiency.html

Near 40 % at one sun intensity, 47% under 100+ sun level.

Unfortunately the catch is it would currently be too expensive to manufacture for rooftop solar panels. Fortunately its just a matter of when, not if, technology of manufacture will improve to a point where it will cost much less and become cost effective to manufacture for rooftops solar panels.

Another solar cell has been designed that, with an energy efficient of about 24%, although not as energy efficient, and, because it contains some rare Earth elements, probably only cost effective for satellites, has the advantage of having less layers so perhaps at least cheaper to fabricate from raw materials (although some of those raw materials are themselves expensive) and also extra thin and light.

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-04-tandem-solar-cell-world-nrel.html

I just found this;

https://sciencex.com/news/2020-04-thin-layered-materials-maximum-solar.html
"...We showed that a 100-micrometer-thick WS2 solar cell has efficiency 36% higher than silicon; additionally, 100-nm-thick MoTe2 has solar cell efficiency of about 20%. We showed that at 3 micrometers thick, trends change and WS2 becomes the highest-efficiency solar cell and tellurides are the lowest-efficiency. We showed that upon using an ideal anti-reflecting coating working in the entire solar spectrum, it is possible to achieve 66% efficiency. W and S are abundant on Earth, WS2 is inert, non-corrosive, and non-toxic; therefore, WS2 is suitable for large-scale solar cell applications...."

Sounds promising.

@humy
Yes, I think perovksites will be limited in usefulness because of weakness to humidity so these cells will probably have much better response life time wise compared to perovskites.

But these 6 layer cells have 47% ratings under 150 suns so that means the total area of production would need 1/150th the real estate for the cells as silicon. That would reduce the price of the system dramatically. 150 square meters of mirrors, 1 square meter of cell.....

call it a thousand watts per square meter incoming, 150 thousand watts on the cell and about 75,000 watts available for heat generation, hot water, more thermodynamic energy generation.
But can you get rid of 75K watts of heat in one square meter of heat sinks or whatever?

There would have to be significant cooling infrastructure and further conversion to energy because of the high energy density if it could be managed.