More on Solar breakthroughs

Inside Greentech:

South Korean scientists, working in conjunction with American researchers, say they have reached a new level of efficiency in an organic solar cell by using a tandem design.

Scientists at South Korea's Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology worked together with Nobel laureate Alan Heeger, professor of physics at U.C. Santa Barbara, to create the new tandem cells under a South Korean-led project started in May, 2006.

Tandem solar cells, in which two solar cells with different absorption characteristics are linked, can convert a wider range of the solar spectrum.

The result of the new architecture was a power conversion efficiency of 6 per cent.