IBM is giving a boost to clean energy with a high-efficiency solar cell made from Earth-abundant materials.

Created from copper, tin, zinc, sulfur, and selenium, it performs at a 9.6 percent efficiency, which is 40 percent higher than previous attempts to create a natural solar cell.

While there have been other solar cells that perform at similar efficiency rates, they're created from materials that have either been too costly or that contain elements that could limit production capacity, making commercialization less likely.

Below is a cross section image of the new material from IBMs blog:


click to enlarge.

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