Australian engineers set solar cell efficiency world record

Engineers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have set a new world record for solar efficiency, converting sunlight to electricity at a rate of about two-thirds the theoretical limit.
•    The new world record for unfocused sunlight saw the engineers achieve a conversion rate of 34.5 per cent. 
•    This marks nearly a 50 per cent leap on the previous record of 24 per cent efficiency, set by Alta Devices of the United States,
•    For the new record, the UNSW researchers used a 28-cm2 four-junction mini-module embedded in a prism
•    he result was obtained by the same UNSW team that set a world record in 2014, achieving an electricity conversion rate of over 40% by using mirrors to concentrate the light – a technique known as CPV (concentrator photovoltaics) – and then similarly splitting out various wavelengths. The new result, however, was achieved using normal sunlight with no concentrators.