Two recent developments in solar energy continue to advance the possibility that solar power will eventually become cost-competitive with other energy sources. First, researchers in Switzerland have managed to increase the efficiency record for flexible cells made from copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) from 17.6 percent to 18.7 percent. While that may seem like a minor upgrade, it’s up from 14.1 percent as recently as 2005. Gian-Luca Bona, the director of Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials and Technology, said, “Next, we need to transfer these innovations to industry for large scale production of low-cost solar modules to take off.” Empa is working with a Swiss startup called Flison to bring the thin-film solar cells to market. Second, researchers at the University of Missouri, United States, have used what they call “nantenna” to create a flexible solar design that theoretically could achieve 95 percent conversion efficiency. While still in the very early stages of development, a Missouri associate professor of chemical engineering said, “If successful, this product will put us orders of magnitudes ahead of the current solar energy technologies we have available to us today.”