Over the past few decades, engineers and material scientists have created increasingly advanced and efficient solar technologies. Some of these technologies are based on photovoltaics with a so-called heterojunction structure, which entails the integration of two materials with distinct optoelectronic properties.

Researchers at Technische Universität Dresden have recently realized a different type of solar cells, referred to as phase heterojunction (PHJ) solar cells. These cells, introduced in a paper published in Nature Energy, were fabricated using two polymorphs (i.e., structural forms) of the same material, the perovskite CsPbI₃, instead of two entirely different semiconductors.

“The realization of a PHJ requires the ability to fabricate two different phases of the same perovskite composition on top of each other,” Yana Vaynzof, lead author of the paper, told TechXplore. “While the fabrication of CsPbI₃ perovskite by solution-processing is well established in the literature, we needed to develop a method to deposit a perovskite without dissolving the underlying layer, so we decided to use thermal evaporation for this purpose.”

You heard that right, it’s time to cool down the solar farms a bit.

It’s a common belief that a solar panel produces more energy on receiving more sunlight but that’s not always true. In fact, a report from the World Economic Forum state that photovoltaic cells on a solar panel (that trap sunlight and convert it into electricity) may start producing less energy if they get overheated.

A new study conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Utah (UU), National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Portland State University (PSU), sheds more light on this rarely discussed aspect of solar panels. It mentions that the efficiency of a solar plant goes down by 0.5 percent.

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