LAUSR

There's a new king of silicon solar cells. Researchers at Kaneka Corp., a resin and plastics manufacturer based in Osaka, have come up with a single-crystal heterojunction silicon solar cell that achieves a record-breaking 26.3 percent efficiency-a 0.7 percent increase over the previous record. That may not seem like a lot, but it's really a big step when you consider that the theoretical maximum efficiency for such cells-which make up about one-quarter of annual global production by gigawatts-is just over 29 percent.