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					</table><p>Polysilicon manufacturer <a href="https://recsilicon.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">REC Silicon</a>’s net loss widened to $26 million for the fourth quarter (Q4) of the financial year (FY) 2022 compared to the net loss of $13.1 million Year-over-Year (YoY).</p>
<p>The company attributed the loss to lower demand and higher expenses due to rising energy and raw material costs.</p>
<p>REC Silicon’s total polysilicon production during Q4 dropped 20% year-over-year (YoY) to 252 metric tons (MT). The company’s polysilicon sales for the quarter declined to 302 MT, down 37% YoY.</p>
<p>The silicon gas sales for the October-December period fell by 31% YoY to 515 MT.</p>
<p>The semiconductor-grade polysilicon sales volume totaled 226 MT compared to 371 MT YoY.</p>
<p>The fall in sales across different segments dented its quarterly revenue by 27% YoY to $31.6 million.</p>
<p>CEO of REC Silicon Kurt Levens said, “The financial results for Q4 2022 highlighted some key areas where we need to accelerate our progress in inflationary input cost mitigation. However, the market-related weakness in silicon gas shipments does not dampen the longer-term outlook and opportunity related to the semiconductor, renewable energy, and energy storage macro trends.”</p>
<p>During Q4, the company commenced the execution of a plan to realize the FBR (Fluidized Bed Reactor technology) production from its plant in Moses Lake, Washington.</p>
<p>REC is also planning a new granular polysilicon analytical laboratory in Moses Lake, for which it directed investments during the quarter.</p>
<p>The company said it was investing in silane enhancements for improved granular polysilicon quality and signed a memorandum of understanding with Hanwha Corporation for silane offtake.</p>
<p>The company formed a Yulin joint venture (JV) in China in 2018, a large-scale silicon manufacturing facility with a design capacity of 18,000 MT of FBR-B granular polysilicon. In 2022, the JV produced approximately 16,000 MT of FBT granular and around 625 MT of loaded silane.</p>
<p>REC announced an expansion strategy for 80,000 MT in Yulin JV in 2022.</p>
<p>REC Silicon’s overall Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation, and Amortization (EBITDA) for Q4 turned negative at $23.6 million compared to $0.4 million.</p>
<p>In the total negative EBITDA, the semiconductor materials segment contributed an EBITDA loss of $6.5 million against the positive EBITDA of $9.3 million in Q4 2021.</p>
<p>The solar material segment contributed an EBITDA loss of $10.5 million compared to $2.6 million in the same period a year ago.</p>
<p><strong>Full Year 2022</strong></p>
<p>The company’s net loss increased to $87 million in FY 2022 compared to $43.5 million YoY, driven by decreased sales due to rising power costs.</p>
<p>The company’s revenue increased to $147.8 million in 2022 from $143.2 million YoY.</p>
<p>The company’s polysilicon production for the year increased to 1,375 MT from 1,225 MT YoY. However, the company sold 1,428 MT of polysilicon in FY 2022 compared to 1,636 MT in the previous year.</p>
<p>The silicon gas sales in 2022 dropped to 2,718 MT from 3,078 MT last year.</p>
<p>The company posted a negative EBITDA of $34.9 million in 2022 compared to a positive EBITDA of $7.7 million in 2021. REC Silicon said that the EBITDA was affected due to an increase in project restarting activities, including the FBR production line in Moses Lake, Washington.</p>
<p>REC Silicon <a href="https://mercomindia.com/rec-silicon-revenue-45-million-q2-2022/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">posted</a> revenue of $45 million in the second quarter of 2022, up 20% from $34.6 million in the previous quarter.</p>
<p>The company’s revenue <a href="https://mercomindia.com/rec-silicons-revenue-surged-23-yoy-q1-2022/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stood</a> at $34.6 million in the first quarter of 2022, a YoY jump of 23% and a quarter-over-quarter decline of 20% from $43.2 million in the previous quarter.</p>


REC Silicon Posts Q4 Net Loss of $26 Million on Lower Demand


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					</table><p>Researchers at the <a href="https://www.empa.ch/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Swiss Federal Laboratory for Material Science and Technology</a> have claimed to have achieved an efficiency of 22.2% for CIGS (composite of copper, indium, gallium, and selenide) flexible solar cells.</p>
<p>This is an improvement of 0.8% from the previous value of 21.4%, which was announced by the same lab. The current enhancement in efficiency is attributed to alloying the light-absorbing semiconductor layer to improve the electronic properties.</p>
<p>Scientists at the Swiss lab led by Shiro Nishiwaki modified the composition of the layer to improve the device performance and output voltage. The flexible solar cells are processed on a polymer film with the CIGS semiconductor layer that absorbs the light deposited by a low-temperature co-evaporation method. CIGS is a suitable absorber material for thin film photovoltaic owing to its thermo-chemical stability and high-power conversion efficiency.</p>
<p>“Two approaches explored to alloy the crystal delivered similar improvements in device performance,” said Romain Carron, group leader in Empa&#8217;s Laboratory for Thin Films and Photovoltaics. The team claims that the study findings can be transferred at an industrial scale following different implementations with equivalent outcomes.</p>
<p>The Swiss Federal Office of Energy (<a href="https://www.bfe.admin.ch/bfe/en/home.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SFOE</a>) supported the research, and the efficiency was independently measured at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (<a href="https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ISE</a>) in Freiburg, Germany.</p>
<p>Flexible and lightweight solar modules manufactured using this technology are said to be suitable for applications on rooftops and facades of buildings, greenhouses, vehicles, airships, and portable electronics. Empa collaborates with Swiss company <a href="https://www.flisom.com/about-us/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Flisom</a> for roll-to-roll manufacturing of lightweight, flexible solar modules for such applications.</p>
<p>Recently, Japan-based Toshiba Corporation’s researchers <a href="https://mercomindia.com/toshiba-announces-conversion-efficiency-for-solar-cells/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> a method of layering a transparent solar cell over a standard silicon cell to develop an efficient, low cost and reliable tandem solar cell to raise the solar module output.</p>
<p>In June, researchers from the Fraunhofer ISE’s Centre for High-Efficiency Solar Cells <a href="https://mercomindia.com/toshiba-announces-conversion-efficiency-for-solar-cells/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">claimed</a> a power conversion efficiency of 47.6% in a multijunction solar cell (III-V) using an anti-reflection coating at a concentration of 665 suns (heat concentration levels equalling 665 suns).</p>


Swiss Researchers Announce Record Efficiency of 22.2% for Flexible CIGS Solar Cells

<p>The scientists of <a href="https://english.spbu.ru/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">St. Petersburg University</a> in Russia have tested a new technology for the fabrication of high-efficiency solar cells based on A3B5 semiconductors integrated on a silicon substrate.</p>
<p>A3B5 compounds are almost equivalent of Silicon (Si) and Germanium (Ge) by their elector-physical properties. This A3B5 semiconductor materials including gallium arsenide (GaAs), indium arsenide (InAs), gallium phosphide (GaP), indium phosphide (InP), gallium antimonide (GaSb), and indium antimonide (InSb), are used in manufacturing electronic and optoelectronic applications.</p>
<p>The scientists say that if this technology is used, it may increase the efficiency of the existing single-junction photovoltaic converters by 1.5 times. They have shown that A3B5 structures can be grown on an inexpensive silicon substrate, providing a decrease in the price of multi-junction solar cells.</p>
<p>“Such solar cells will be significantly more effective at absorbing sunlight and generating electricity,” added the University statement.</p>
<p>“We’ve learned to grow the topmost layer. This material system can potentially also be used for intermediate layers. If you add arsenic, you obtain quaternary GaPNAs alloy, and from it, several junctions operating in different parts of the solar spectrum can be grown on a silicon substrate,” said <strong>Ivan Mukhin</strong>, an ITMO University researcher.</p>
<p>According to him, the potential efficiency of such solar cells can exceed 40% under light concentration, which is 1.5 times higher than that of modern Si technologies.</p>
<p>With the rapid exhaustion of hydrocarbon fuel reserves and environmental issues, scientists are increasingly researching the development of green technologies, which also includes the development of solar technologies.</p>
<p>“Hydrocarbons as a traditional source of energy are exhaustible, and their burning leads to the production of carbon dioxide,” added<strong> Mukhin</strong>.</p>
<p>Sun can be a virtually inexhaustible energy source for the planet. According to the recent calculations, only 1% of the solar energy that reaches the earth daily would be enough to provide humans with enough electricity for a year.</p>
<p>“This is why in the future, solar energy has a chance to replace traditional energy sources that depend on burning fossil fuels,” said Mukhin.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the team of researchers has revealed several factors that hinder the broader use of solar panels. For instance, conventional silicon solar cells have a relatively low efficiency – less than 20%. More efficient technologies require more complex semiconductor technologies, which significantly increases the price of the solar cells, the report suggests.</p>
<p>The most common solar cell technologies are silicon-based. According to Mukhin, “This is a relatively cheap and widespread material. The problem is that silicon is an indirect semiconductor and absorbs light rather poorly, which limits its use in efficient solar cells. There are other semiconductor materials, such as A3B5 semiconductor compounds, which consist of elements of the third and fifth groups of the Periodic Table. They are much better at absorbing light but are much more expensive than silicon, which significantly increases the cost of the resulting solar cells. As a result, despite their high efficiency, it’s not profitable to produce them.”</p>
<p>In November 2019, Beijing-based Hanergy Holding Group Ltd announced that its Chengdu Research and Development Center again <a href="https://mercomindia.com/hanergy-achieves-conversion-efficiency/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">breached</a> the world record for its silicon heterojunction (SHJ) technology with a record-setting 25.11% conversion efficiency.</p>
<p>Earlier, it was reported by <a href="https://mercomindia.com/perovskite-cigs-semiconductors-efficiency-modules/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mercom</a> that by combining thin-film solar modules based on perovskite semiconductors with semiconductors made of copper, indium, gallium, and selenium, solar module technology could cross the 30% efficiency mark.</p>
<p>Image credit: ITMO</p>


Scientists Propose Technology That Could Reduce the Cost of High-Efficiency Solar Cells

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