High-efficiency thin and compact concentrator photovoltaics with micro-solar cells directly attached to a lens array.

We propose a thin and compact concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) module, about 20 mm thick, one tenth thinner than those of conventional CPVs that are widely deployed for mega-solar systems, to broaden CPV application scenarios. We achieved an energy conversion efficiency of 37.1% at a module temperature of 25 °C under sunlight irradiation optimized for our module. Our CPV module has a lens array consisting of 10 mm-square unit lenses and micro solar cells that are directly attached to the lens array, to reduce the focal length of the concentrator and to reduce optical losses due to reflection. The optical loss of the lens in our module is about 9.0%, which is lower than that of conventional CPV modules with secondary optics. This low optical loss enables our CPV module to achieve a high energy conversion efficiency.