U.S. Air Force funds Ascent Solar Technologies' high-efficiency solar cell program

LITTLETON, Colo., 25 Oct. 2007. Ascent Solar Technologies Inc., a developer of thin-film photovoltaic materials, announced that the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has contracted to increase funding of Ascent Solar's development of high-performance thin-film tandem photovoltaics (PV) based on flexible monolithically integrated CIGS technology. The contract modification represents up to $749,000 of additional contract value over a 27-month period.

Since 1995, AFRL has provided funding for the development of the flexible CIGS at ITN Energy Systems Inc. and now at Ascent Solar, including the development of aspects of future tandem devices.

Tandem solar cells are two solar cells in a stack, where the top cell collects the blue portion of the solar spectrum and the bottom cell collects the rest of the visible spectrum. It is believed that the type of technology pursued by this AFRL program has the potential to reach an efficiency of 20 percent in the future.