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Solar cells based on organic molecules offer potential advantages over conventional devices for converting light into electricity. These organic solar cells could be inexpensive, durable, and easy to make. However, organic cells do not yet have the performance that matches conventional devices. Scientists’ efforts to improve performance have been limited by their limited understanding of how electrons excited by light (or “photoexcited”) become “free carriers.”

In principle, free carriers flow across a material and emerge as an electrical current. Prior scientific studies suggest that photoexcitation leads to a tightly bound pair consisting of an electron and a hole. These studies did not describe how to overcome the strong binding forces to form free carriers. This new study reveals that more sites on neighboring molecules can accept electrons, explaining how free carriers form directly.

Published in Materials Horizons, this research developed a new model called Distribution Range Electron Transfer (DRET). Previous models for the generation of free carriers in organic solar cells have generally invoked new physical phenomena to explain experimental results. In particular, they have said that free carriers can form with efficiency that approaches 100% in a material where opposite charges are traditionally difficult to separate and use.

Adding a molecule normally used in detergent to an infrared LED could make devices that are easier to manufacture, require less energy and display richer colours than existing ones.

Solar cells and LEDs made from perovskite, a titanium and calcium crystal, have long held promise as being more efficient and easier to produce than commonly used silicon-based devices, but making them both stable and efficient enough to rival silicon’s commercial success has proved difficult.

What gives humans the advantage over our incoming robot masters? Junaid Mubeen at New Scientist Live this October.

Scientists in Australia have demonstrated a new way to apply a passivating contact layer to silicon cells. They produced an n-type cell with aluminum-titanium passivating contact and 21.9% efficiency, and claimed the technique could open up new possibilities for the use of transition metal oxides in cell passivation.

Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures co-led a $44 million funding round for a startup that aims to accelerate solar far construction.

Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a climate change solution-focused VC firm backed by the likes of Bill Gates, has joined a $44 million backing of solar startup Terabase Energy, a press statement reveals.

Continue reading “Bill Gates-backed startup is using robots to build enormous solar farms” »

The electrification of heating systems could play a significant role in building decarbonization. Heat pumps are emerging as a solution.

Iranian scientists have demonstrated a multi-layer silicon nanoparticle (SNP) solar cell based on nanoparticles that are densely stacked inside a dielectric medium. They considered different SNP structures and configurations to tailor these particles as a p–n junction cell.

“This is because SNPs are assumed to be the main absorber in the cell. Thus, any distance between them reduces the absorption of incident photons,” the group said.

They considered different SNP structures and configurations to tailor these particles as a p–n junction cell. They said this kind of cell could achieve a theoretical efficiency of around 11%.

Tiny crystals, known as quantum dots, have enabled an international team to achieve a quantum efficiency exceeding 100 percent in the photocurrent generated in a hybrid inorganic-organic semiconductor.

Perovskites are exciting semiconductors for light-harvesting applications and have already shown some impressive performances in solar cells. But improvements in photo-conversion efficiency are necessary to take this technology to a broader market.

Light comes in packets of energy known as photons. When a semiconductor absorbs a photon, the electromagnetic energy is transferred to a negatively charged electron and its positively charged counterpart, known as a hole. An electric field can sweep these particles in opposite directions, thereby allowing a current to flow. This is the basic operation of a solar cell. It might sound simple, but optimizing the quantum efficiency, or getting as many electron-hole pairs from the incoming photons as possible, has been a long-standing goal.

Swiss researchers have done the (theoretically) impossible, creating not one but two silicon-based solar cells with efficiencies greater than 30% — breaking a world record and potentially illuminating the path to a future of cheaper clean energy.

The status quo: Solar cells absorb light and convert it into electricity. They’re the basis of most solar power tech, and about 95% of them are made from silicon because it’s abundant, long-lasting, and relatively cheap.

Most of the silicon solar cells sold today are about 22% efficient, meaning they convert 22% of the solar energy that hits them into electricity. We don’t have too much room for improvement with silicon solar cells, either, as they have a theoretical efficiency limit of about 29%.

Thirty seconds of sunlight could boost the battery life of future smartwatches and other wearables by tens of minutes, thanks to a renewable and rechargeable battery prototype developed by the University of Surrey.

Surrey’s Advanced Technology Institute (ATI) has demonstrated how its new photo-rechargeable system, which merges zinc-ion batteries with perovskite solar cells, could allow wearables to spring back to life without the need to plug in.

Jinxin Bi, a Ph.D. candidate at ATI and the first author of the paper, says that “this technology provides a promising strategy for efficient use of clean energy and enables wearable electronics to be operated continuously without plug-in charging. Our prototype could represent a step forward to how we interact with wearables and other internet-of-things devices, such as remote real-time health monitors.”