These organic cells are made of carbon-based materials and have double the efficiency of existing organic solar cells.
Category: solar power
A collaborative research team from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has developed an innovative laminated interface microstructure that enhances the stability and photoelectric conversion efficiency of inverted perovskite solar cells. The research is published in the journal Nature Synthesis.
Perovskite solar cells have considerable potential to replace traditional silicon solar cells in various applications, including grid electricity, portable power sources, and space photovoltaics. This is due to their unique advantages, such as high efficiency, low cost, and aesthetic appeal.
The basic structures of perovskite solar cells are classified into two types: standard and inverted. The inverted structure demonstrates better application prospects because the electronic materials used in each layer are more stable compared to those in the standard configuration.
Converting sunlight into electricity is the task of photovoltaic solar cells, but nearly half the light that reaches a flat silicon solar cell surface is lost to reflection. While traditional antireflective coatings help, they only work within a narrow range of light frequency and incidence angles. A new study may have overcome this limit.
As reported in Advanced Photonics Nexus, researchers have proposed a new type of antireflective coating using a single, ultrathin layer of polycrystalline silicon nanostructures (a.k.a. a metasurface). Achieving minimal reflection across certain wavelengths and angles, the metasurface was reportedly developed by combining forward and inverse design techniques, enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI).
The result is a coating that sharply reduces sunlight reflection across a wide range of wavelengths and angles, setting a new benchmark for performance with minimal material complexity.
Japanese scientists have created all-organic solar cells made of carbon-based materials with a record efficiency of 8.7% for this type of cell.
It is noted that the amount of solar energy that reaches the Earth every day is 10 times higher than all the existing needs of humanity. Over the past 6 years, there has been a rapid development of cells for solar panels. However, there are still a number of challenges to their widespread use, including high production costs, efficiency, and environmental impact.
Silicon is currently the most widely used material in solar cells. However, such cells often also contain potentially hazardous materials that are difficult to dispose of in an environmentally friendly manner.
New semiconductor devices could supplement solar cells by making electricity when the Sun isn’t shining.
More robust ‘two-dimensional’ perovskites, made from thin films, could have wide applications in power-generating windows, LEDs, radiation detectors and more.
New research has revealed the fundamental mechanisms that limit the performance of copper catalysts—critical components in artificial photosynthesis that transform carbon dioxide and water into valuable fuels and chemicals.
In a study co-led by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, researchers have used sophisticated X-ray techniques to directly observe how copper nanoparticles change during the catalytic process.
By applying small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS)—a technique traditionally used to study soft materials like polymers—to this catalyst system, the team gained unprecedented insights into catalyst degradation that has puzzled scientists for decades.
KAUST is part of an international collaboration that has demonstrated how an ionic salt molecule, known as CPMAC, can significantly boost solar cell performance by 0.6%. A new study published in Science reveals that integrating a synthetic molecule significantly improves the energy efficiency and
Discover Japan’s renewable energy breakthrough with the first titanium solar panel—1000 times more powerful than conventional cells.
Over the past few decades, solar cells have become increasingly widespread, with a growing number of individuals and businesses worldwide now relying on solar energy to power their homes or operations. Energy engineers worldwide have thus been trying to identify materials that are promising for the development of photovoltaics, are eco-friendly and non-toxic, and can also be easily sourced and processed.
These include kesterite-based materials, such as Cu₂ZnSnS₄ (CZTS), a class of semiconducting materials with a crystal structure that resembles that of the naturally occurring mineral kesterite. Kesterite solar cells could have various advantages over the conventional silicon-based photovoltaics that are most used today, including lower manufacturing costs, a less toxic composition and greater flexibility.
Despite their potential, kesterite solar cells developed to date attain significantly lower power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) than their silicon counterparts. This is in great part due to atomic-scale defects in kesterite-based materials that trap charge carriers and prompt non-radiative recombination, a process that causes energy losses and thus reduces the solar cells’ performance.