By dye-sensitizing solar cells, a team of international researchers has achieved 11 percent conversion efficiency - what they say is the highest ever achieved for DSSCs without the use of ruthenium.

According to the French and Chinese researchers - who hail from National Chiao Tung University, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and National Chung Hsing University - the use of a unique porphyrin dye was the key to achieving such high efficiency. "High" is a relative term: The best silicon-based solar cells are about 20 percent efficient. But, until now, solar technology site Solar Novus Today says, poyphyrin-dyed solar cells had only been between 5 and 7 percent efficient.

DSSCs' major advantages are ease of assembly and low cost of manufacture, and they're likely to become more common if their efficiency can be made competitive with conventional solar panels'. With all types of solar cells becoming more efficient and silicon relatively inexpensive, though, that could prove to be a challenge.

Indeed, thin-film solar panels - which, like DSSCs, are cheap to produce - may be dwindling from the market. Chinese panel company Suntech is converting its thin-film assembly operations to silicon-panel production.