Progress in large-area Cu(InGa)Se/sub 2/-based thin-film modules with the efficiency of over 13%

Development of robust and reproducible production technologies suitable to large-area Cu(InGa)Se/sub 2/-based thin-film modules with a Zn(O,S,OH)/sub x/ buffer layer is an urgent issue to realize the commercialization. Focusing to achieve a competitive efficiency to commercialized polycrystalline-Si solar cells, we have demonstrated two world record efficiencies of 14.3% in the substrate size of 900 cm/sup 2/ measured by ARL and 13.4% measured by NREL on a 3600 cm/sup 2/-sized mosaic module with four 900 cm/sup 2/ circuits connected in parallel. A new challenge is to achieve a milestone of 13% efficiency in the substrate size of 3600 cm/sup 2/, at this time, champion module efficiency is 12.8% in the size of 3600 cm/sup 2/, for which the key is to improve the uniformity of the constituent films for this size of circuits.