Eindhoven researchers make important step towards a solar cell that generates hydrogen A solar cell that produces fuel rather than electricity.
The material gallium phosphide enables their solar cell to produce the clean fuel hydrogen gas from liquid water.
The electricity produced by a solar cell can be used to set off chemical reactions. If this generates a fuel
Solar fuel cell To connect an existing silicon solar cell to a battery that splits the water may well be an efficient solution now
when it is a large flat surface as used in Gap solar cells. The researchers have overcome this problem by making a grid of very small Gap nanowires, measuring five hundred nanometers (a millionth of a millimeter) long and ninety nanometers thick.
and lead to faster transistors, cheaper solar cells, new types of sensors and more efficient bioelectric sensory devices.
#Rice university finding could lead to cheap, efficient metal-based solar cells: Plasmonics study suggests how to maximize production of'hot electrons'Abstract:
and reduce the costs of photovoltaic solar cells. Although the domestic solar-energy industry grew by 34 percent in 2014,
if the U s. is to meet its national goal of reducing the cost of solar electricity to 6 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Today's most efficient photovoltaic cells use a combination of semiconductors that are made from rare and expensive elements like gallium and indium.
"The efficiency of semiconductor-based solar cells can never be extended in this way because of the inherent optical properties of the semiconductors."
UC Riverside researchers find a way to use the infrared region of the sun's spectrum to make solar cells more efficient A huge gain in this direction has now been made by a team of chemists at the University of California,
"The infrared region of the solar spectrum passes right through the photovoltaic materials that make up today's solar cells,
"This is energy lost, no matter how good your solar cell. The hybrid material we have come up with first captures two infrared photons that would normally pass right through a solar cell without being converted to electricity,
then adds their energies together to make one higher energy photon. This upconverted photon is absorbed readily by photovoltaic cells,
generating electricity from light that normally would be wasted.""Bardeen added that these materials are essentially"reshaping the solar spectrum
"so that it better matches the photovoltaic materials used today in solar cells. The ability to utilize the infrared portion of the solar spectrum could boost solar photovoltaic efficiencies by 30 percent or more.
"This 550--nanometer light can be absorbed by any solar cell material, "Bardeen said.""The key to this research is the hybrid composite material--combining inorganic semiconductor nanoparticles with organic compounds.
and industries, including laser, solar cells, production of transistors and nanomedicine. The colloid form of these particles have very interesting properties and characteristics,
Detecting excitons in metals could provide clues on how light is converted into electrical and chemical energy in solar cells and plants.
and how many south-facing, non-shaded rooftops could accommodate solar panels. They developed and consulted wind maps
The plan calls for no more than 0. 5 percent of any state's land to be covered in solar panels or wind turbines.
#First solar cell made of highly ordered molecular frameworks (Nanowerk News) Researchers at KIT have developed a material suited for photovoltaics.
For the first time, a functioning organic solar cell consisting of a single component has been produced on the basis of metal-organic framework compounds (MOFS.
"Organic solar cells made of metal-organic frameworks are highly efficient in producing charge carriers. Figure: Wll/KIT) We have opened the door to a new room,
suggest that the excellent properties of the solar cell result from an additional mechanism the formation of indirect band gaps that plays an important role in photovoltaics.
A metal-organic solar cell produced on the basis of this novel porphyrine-MOF is presented now by the researchers in the journal Angewandte Chemie (Applied Chemistry.
The clou is that we just need a single organic molecule in the solar cell, Wll says.
Thanks to their mechanical properties, MOF thin films of a few hundred nanometers in thickness can be used for flexible solar cells or for the coating of clothing material or deformable components.
organic materials represent a highly interesting alternative to silicon that has to be processed at high costs before it can be used for the photoactive layer of a solar cell l
#Chemists devise technology that could transform solar energy storage (Nanowerk News) The materials in most of todays residential rooftop solar panels can store energy from the sun for only a few microseconds at a time.
A new technology developed by chemists at UCLA is capable of storing solar energy for up to several weeks an advance that could change the way scientists think about designing solar cells.
"The scientists devised a new arrangement of solar cell ingredients, with bundles of polymer donors (green rods) and neatly organized fullerene acceptors (purple, tan.
conventional rooftop solar cells use silicon, a fairly expensive material. There is currently a big push to make lower-cost solar cells using plastics, rather than silicon,
but todays plastic solar cells are relatively inefficient, in large part because the separated positive and negative electric charges often recombine before they can become electrical energy.
Modern plastic solar cells dont have well-defined structures like plants do because we never knew how to make them before,
Tolbert said. But this new system pulls charges apart and keeps them separated for days,
The researchers are already working on how to incorporate the technology into actual solar cells. Yves Rubin, a UCLA professor of chemistry and another senior co-author of the study,
"The results published online June 23 in the journal Nature Communications could transform the manufacture of high-tech coatings for anti-reflective surfaces, improved solar cells,
even at the extremely low power levels characteristic of tiny solar cells. Previous experimental ultralow-power converters had efficiencies of only 40 or 50 percent.
Where its predecessors could use a solar cell to either charge a battery or directly power a device,
Ups and downs The circuit chief function is to regulate the voltages between the solar cell, the battery,
and falls depends on the voltage generated by the solar cell, which is highly variable. So the timing of the switch throws has to vary, too.
whose selection is determined by the solar cell voltage. Once again, when the capacitor fills, the switches in the inductor path are flipped. n this technology space,
"Quantum dots, which have use in diverse applications such as medical imaging, lighting, display technologies, solar cells, photocatalysts, renewable energy and optoelectronics, are typically expensive and complicated to manufacture.
and manufacture of superconductors or high-efficiency solar cells and light sensors, said leader of the research,
The innovation is an advancement over the most common solar energy systems that rely on using sunlight immediately as a power source.
said a major drawback of current solar technology is the limitation on storing energy under dark conditions."
With ultrathin solar panels for trim and a USB charger tucked into the waist, the Southwest-inspired garment captured enough sunshine to charge cell phones
#Novel method creates nanowires with new useful properties (Nanowerk News) Harvard scientists have developed a first-of-its-kind method of creating a class of nanowires that one day could have applications in areas ranging from consumer electronics to solar panels.
Professor of Chemistry, could have applications in areas ranging from consumer electronics to solar panels. This is really a fundamental Discovery day said.
and lead to faster transistors, cheaper solar cells, new types of sensors and more efficient bioelectric sensory devices.
much as solar panels convert light energy into electrical energy. That voltage was boosted then to a useful level by a DC-DC converter (arxiv. org/abs/1505.06815.
#Improved, cheaper hybrid solar cell material created Researchers at Lithuania Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) Organic chemistry department have developed a new semiconductor material,
ffers a much cheaper alternative to those currently used in hybrid solar cells The efficiency of the new semiconductor methoxydiphenylamine-substituted carbazole,
The solar cells containing organic semiconductors created at KTU were constructed and tested by physicists at Lausanne. The tests revealed that the efficiency of the cellsconverting solar energy into electricity was 16.9%.
and incorporated into a CH3NH3PBI3 perovskite solar cell, which displayed a power conversion efficiency of 16.91,
Various electro-optical measurements were carried out to characterize the new material. rof Getautis said that the material will be used in the construction of future solar cells:
lmost all solar cells are made from inorganic semiconductors. Hybrid, semi-organic solar cells are still being developed and perfected at the research centers all over the world.
KTU and Swiss Federal Institute of technology Lausanne have registered the invention at the European Patent office. e concluded, n V886,
and solid-state dye-sensitized solar cells. ur paper is among the 5%of most important publications in one of the most influential chemistry journals followed by all undertaking research in the field of chemistry.
#Multilayer QD Solar cells Promising for Natcore RED BANK, N. J.,Feb 23, 2015 A new breed of quantum dots (QDS) could enable multilayer solar cells that capture more of the sun energy.
Natcore Technology Inc. said scientists in the laboratories of cofounder Dr. Andrew Barron, who is also a professor at Rice university,
have formed successfully a heterojunction solar cell using germanium QDS on an ordinary n-type silicon wafer. Individual germanium quantum dots were coated with silicon dioxide (silica),
QD solar cells have the potential to capture solar energy more efficiently than other cells available commercially today.
Tandem solar cells are used in space applications. The major issue preventing their broad use in terrestrial applications has been need the to use exotic semiconducting materials for the upper layers, according to Natcore.
it will open the door to potential ultra-high-efficiency, multijunction solar cells, the company said.
By 2017, they hope to release a commercial version big enough to hold a day worth of energy from a typical three-kilowatt home rooftop solar array.
Solar cell Made Of Highly Ordered Molecular Frameworks Researchers have developed a functioning organic solar cell consisting of a single component has been produced on the basis of metal-organic framework compounds (MOFS.
suggest that the excellent properties of the solar cell result from an additional mechanism the formation of indirect band gaps that plays an important role in photovoltaics.
The metal-organic solar cell was produced on the basis of this novel porphyrine-MOF. he clou is that we just need a single organic molecule in the solar cell
MOF thin films of a few hundred nanometers in thickness can be used for flexible solar cells or for the coating of clothing material or deformable components.
organic materials represent a highly interesting alternative to silicon that has to be processed at high costs before it can be used for the photoactive layer of a solar cell.
#Solar cells that work on cloudy days just hit a record-breaking 22.1%efficiency There's been plenty of good news about solar power lately-not only are governments around the world using it more and more,
traditional solar cells simply don't work that well unless they're in direct, bright sunlight. To rectify this, researchers have been working on creating structures called black silicon solar cells,
which absorb way more light and are useful even on overcast days. But they've never been efficient enough to be real players in the solar race-up until now, that is.
A team of European researchers has announced just that they've set a new record by creating black silicon solar cells that can convert 22.1 percent of the Sun's light into electricity-an increase of almost four percent on their previous record.
While this doesn't compare to the record of 40 percent efficiency in traditional silicon solar cells,
it shows that black silicon solar cells are now real contenders that could help greatly reduce the cost of solar power in the future.
Even more impressively, the team compared their new black silicon solar cells with traditional solar cells of the same efficiency,
"What's different about black silicon solar cells is that their surfaces are covered in tiny, nanoscale ridges,
Publishing in Nature Nanotechnology, the researchers report that their resulting cells are the most efficient black silicon solar cells to date, capable of turning 22.1 percent of available light into electricity."
and black silicon solar cells have real potential for industrial production, "the authors write. What's even more exciting about this research is the fact that the team hasn't optimised the new cells as yet,
Basically, this means that we may soon see solar panels on the market that can create electricity no matter where the Sun is in the sky,
#Scientists figure out how to make solar cells produce fuel AND electricity A new type of solar cell can convert liquid water into clean hydrogen fuel 10 times more effectively than any other technology,
and uses 10,000 times less precious material in the process. Invented by researchers in The netherlands,
the secret to these new prototype solar cells are gallium phosphide nanowires, which can split water into its hydrogen
The efficiency of solar cell technology has improved dramatically over the past decade and is now providing Germany with at least half its national energy requirements.
70-metre stretch of road covered in solar cells generated enough electricity to power an household for a year.
Over the past few years, scientists have been figuring out how to take things one step further by using solar cells to produce both fuel and electricity.
Previous studies have shown that connecting an existing silicon solar cell to a water-splitting battery can produce hydrogen fuel,
and when used in big, flat sheets, it not capable of absorbing sunlight as efficiently as needed for a viable solar cell system.
and integrated them with existing solar cell technology. Not only did they end up using 10,000 less gallium phosphide than
so their solar cells can meet this 15 percent battery yield.""For the nanowires we needed 10,000 less precious Gap material than in cells with a flat surface.
#Improved solar panels and printed electronics on the horizon with new material discovery Published today in Nature Communications,
University of Melbourne researchers say their discovery of the highly sought-after'nematic liquid crystals'can now lead to vastly improved organic solar cell performance.
"We have improved the performance of this type of solar cell from around 8 per cent efficient to 9. 3 per cent,
"The discovery is a step forward for the wider commercialization of printed organic solar cells. But more than this, could aid in the development of new materials with improved performance such as LCD screens."
"Uptake of the current generation of organic solar cells has lagged behind more widespread silicon-based models, due to their comparative lack of performance even with a simplified construction via large printers.
This discovery could help improve the performance of these solar cells, and lead to even more innovation in the coming years,"concluded Dr Jones s
like transistors and solar cells. Part of the challenge of working with nanowires is creating a good transition between these nanowires and an electrical contact to the outside world.
"Potential applications range from battery anodes, to solar cells, to 3d electronic circuits and biomedical devices.""The 3d transformation process involves a balance between the forces of adhesion to the substrate and the strain energies of the bent,
The previously unknown durability to extreme conditions position Graphexeter as a viable and attractive replacement to indium tin oxide (ITO) the main conductive material currently used in electronics such as'smart'mirrors or windows or even solar panels.
This is particularly exciting for the solar panel industry where the ability to withstand all weathers is crucial.
Moreover, the mobile suitcase laboratory will be operated by an integrated solar panel and a power pack. The mobile suitcase laboratory will enter a field trial in Guinea, in collaboration with the Institut pasteur de Dakar
The research by the team from the Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI) based at the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall is published in the journal Solar energy Materials & Solar cells.
The research is questioning the perovskite material's ability to produce stable solar cells under versatile climatic conditions.
The obtained results are very crucial in terms of perovskite solar cell growth and understanding how to make better devices s
#New technique for growing high-efficiency perovskite solar cells This week in the journal Science, Los alamos National Laboratory researchers reveal a new solution-based hot-casting technique
that allows growth of highly efficient and reproducible solar cells from large-area perovskite crystals.""These perovskite crystals offer promising routes for developing low-cost, solar-based, clean global energy solutions for the future,"said Aditya Mohite,
high temperature crystal-growth processes are seen as the future of efficient solar technology. Solar cells composed of organic-inorganic perovskites offer efficiencies approaching that of silicon,
but they have been plagued with some important deficiencies limiting their commercial viability. It is this failure that the Los alamos technique successfully corrects.
The researchers fabricated planar solar cells from pervoskite materials with large crystalline grains that had efficiencies approaching 18%
#Self-assembled nanotextures create antireflective surface on silicon solar cells Reducing the amount of sunlight that bounces off the surface of solar cells helps maximize the conversion of the sun's rays to electricity,
has potential for streamlining silicon solar cell production and reducing manufacturing costs. The approach may find additional applications in reducing glare from windows, providing radar camouflage for military equipment,
"The issue with using such coatings for solar cells, "he said, "is that we'd prefer to fully capture every color of the light spectrum within the device,
The scientists started by coating the top surface of a silicon solar cell with a polymer material called a"block copolymer,
The self-assembled pattern served as a template for forming posts in the solar cell like those in the moth eye using a plasma of reactive gases-a technique commonly used in the manufacture of semiconductor electronic circuits.
The resulting surface nanotexture served to gradually change the refractive index to drastically cut down on reflection of many wavelengths of light simultaneously, regardless of the direction of light impinging on the solar cell."
Solar cells textured in this way outperform those coated with a single antireflective film by about 20 percent,
whether there are economic advantages to assembling silicon solar cells using our method, compared to other, established processes in the industry,
including glass and plastic, for antiglare windows and coatings for solar panels. This research was supported by the DOE Office of Science e
and is fitted with a solar panel a wind turbine and a battery. The turbine runs at a speed of 10 to 200 revolutions per minute (rpm)
and has a lower output (100 W). An electronic control system manages the flow of energy between the solar panel the wind turbine the battery and the light.
#Getting rid of pinholes in solar cells The pinholes, identified by OIST's Energy Materials and Surface Sciences Unit led by Prof.
The pinholes in the top layer of the solar cell, known as the hole transport layer, were identified as a key cause for the quick degradation of perovskite solar cells.
Researchers around the world are investigating the potential of perovskite, a humanmade organic-inorganic hybrid material, as an alternative to silicon-based solar cells."
"The researchers eliminated the pinholes by using a different method to create the top layer of the solar cell,
and the spiro-OMETAD molecules deposited onto the solar cell. To create this layer, a solar cell is positioned upside down on the ceiling of a vacuum chamber.
As the spiro-OMETAD is heated up, it evaporates and the gas molecules that stick to the perovskite,
"We were able to reduce the thickness of the solar cell from over 200 nanometers to 70 nanometers."
which makes the movement of"holes"carrying positive charges around the solar cell circuit much easier.""A very small difference between the top layer and perovskite material means maybe we get greater energy efficiency,
The evaporation method also resulted in a much longer-lasting solar cell. Before, the cells would lose the ability to efficiently convert sunlight into electricity after a couple of days.
While cheaper than conventional silicon-based solar cells, evaporation-based perovskite solar cells are more expensive than spin-coated cells.
#Stable perovskite solar cells developed through structural simplification Lead-halide-based perovskite (hereinafter simply referred to as perovskite) has been used as a solar cell material since six years ago.
Perovskite solar cells are promising low-cost and highly-efficient next-generation solar cells because they can be produced through low-temperature processes such as spin coating,
and generate a large amount of electricity due to their high optical absorption together with the high open-circuit voltage.
As such, the research on perovskite solar cells is making rapid progress. In order to identify the semiconducting properties of perovskites
and formulate guidelines for the development of highly efficient solar cell materials, NIMS launched an ad hoc Team on Perovskite PV Cells last October led by the deputy director-general of GREEN.
While the conventional perovskite solar cells have demonstrated high conversion efficiency, they were not sufficiently stable plagued by their low reproducibility
Researchers successfully created reproducible and stable perovskite solar cells as follows; They proposed an equivalent circuit model that explains the semiconducting properties of perovskites based on analysis of the internal resistance of perovskite solar cells.
This model indicated the existence of a charge transport process derived from an impurity level between the conduction
Due to this transport process, the efficiency of perovskite solar cells may be suppressed to some extent. In future studies, researchers will investigate into the cause of the impurity level and its influence on solar cells.
In addition, they intend to remove the impurity level and improve the efficiency of the solar cells,
thereby contributing to energy and environmental conservation. This study was conducted at GREEN as a part of the MEXT-commissioned project titled"Development of environmental technology using nanotechnology."
#First solar cell made of highly ordered molecular frameworks"We have opened the door to a new room,
suggest that the excellent properties of the solar cell result from an additional mechanism--the formation of indirect band gaps--that plays an important role in photovoltaics.
A metal-organic solar cell produced on the basis of this novel porphyrine-MOF is presented now by the researchers in the journal Angewandte Chemie (Applied Chemistry.
"The clou is that we just need a single organic molecule in the solar cell, "Wöll says.
Thanks to their mechanical properties, MOF thin films of a few hundred nanometers in thickness can be used for flexible solar cells or for the coating of clothing material or deformable components.
organic materials represent a highly interesting alternative to silicon that has to be processed at high costs before it can be used for the photoactive layer of a solar cell l
"Quantum dots, which have use in diverse applications such as medical imaging, lighting, display technologies, solar cells, photocatalysts, renewable energy and optoelectronics, are typically expensive and complicated to manufacture.
#New storage cell for solar energy storage, nighttime conversion The innovation is an advancement over the most common solar energy systems that rely on using sunlight immediately as a power source.
said a major drawback of current solar technology is the limitation on storing energy under dark conditions."
#Sticky tape and phosphorus the key to ultrathin solar cells The team used sticky tape to create single-atom thick layers,
such as LEDS or solar cells,"said lead researcher Dr Yuerui (Larry) Lu, from The Australian National University (ANU)."
#Transparent, electrically conductive network of encapsulated silver nanowires The electrodes for connections on the"sunny side"of a solar cell need to be not just electrically conductive,
She then transferred this suspension with a pipette onto a substrate, in this case a silicon solar cell.
In addition, the new electrode casts a considerably smaller shadow on the solar cell.""The network of silver nanowires is so fine that almost no light for solar energy conversion is lost in the cell due to the shadow,
On the contrary, she hopes"it might even be possible for the silver nanowires to scatter light into the solar cell absorbers in a controlled fashion through
#Laser-generated surface structures create extremely water-repellent metals Super-hydrophobic properties could lead to applications in solar panels,
#Perovskites provide big boost to silicon solar cells Stacking perovskites onto a conventional silicon solar cell dramatically improves the overall efficiency of the cell,
The researchers describe their novel perovskite-silicon solar cell in this week edition of the journal Energy & Environmental science. ee been looking for ways to make solar panels that are more efficient and lower cost,
said study co-author Michael Mcgehee, a professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford. ight now, silicon solar cells dominate the world market,
but the power conversion efficiency of silicon photovoltaics has been stuck at 25 percent for 15 years.
Mcgehee said. ou simply put one solar cell on top of the other, and you get more efficiency than either could do by itself.
rivaling commercially available silicon solar cells and spawning widespread interest among silicon manufacturers. ur goal is to leverage the silicon factories that already exist around the world,
co-lead author of the study. ith tandem solar cells, you don need a billion-dollar capital expenditure to build a new factory.
Sunlight to electricity Solar cells work by converting photons of sunlight into an electric current that moves between two electrodes.
Silicon solar cells generate electricity by absorbing photons of visible and infrared light, while perovskite cells harvest only the visible part of the solar spectrum where the photons have more energy.
Microscopic cross-section of a tandem solar cell made with two photovoltaic materials, perovskite stacked on top of CIGS (copper indium gallium diselenide).
Colin Bailie, Stanford bsorbing the high-energy part of the spectrum allows perovskite solar cells to generate more power per photon of visible light than silicon cells,
Mcgehee said. o one had made ever a perovskite solar cell with two transparent electrodes. Perovskites are damaged easily by heat and readily dissolve in water.
This inherent instability ruled out virtually all of the conventional techniques for applying electrodes onto the perovoskite solar cell
Remarkable efficiency For the experiment, the Stanford team stacked a perovskite solar cell with an efficiency of a 12.7 percent on top of a low-quality silicon cell with an efficiency of just 11.4 percent. y combining two cells
In another experiment, the research team replaced the silicon solar cell with a cell made of copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS.
it might be possible to upgrade conventional solar cells into higher-performing tandems with little increase in cost,
We have a ways to go to show that perovskite solar cells are stable enough to last 25 years.
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