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Category: solar power – Page 26

In an article published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry C, Brazilian researchers describe a strategy to enhance the efficiency and stability of solar cells made of perovskite, a semiconductor material produced in the laboratory. The results of the project could be highly positive for the future of the solar power sector.

Developed by researchers at São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Bauru, Brazil, the method involves the use of a class of materials known as MXenes, a family of two-dimensional materials with a graphene-like structure combining transition metals, carbon and/or nitrogen, and surface functional groups such as fluoride, oxygen or hydroxyl. Their properties include high electrical conductivity, good thermal stability, and high transmittance (relating to the amount of light that passes through a substance without being reflected or absorbed).

In the study, the MXene Ti3C2Tx was added to polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) to form a passivation coating, which was spin-coated on top of the perovskite layer of inverted solar cells. Passivation coatings are designed to mitigate possible defects in polycrystalline solids (perovskite in this case) due to interaction with the environment or to their internal structure.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform technologies as diverse as solar panels, in-body medical sensors and self-driving vehicles. But these applications are already pushing today’s computers to their limits when it comes to speed, memory size and energy use.

Fortunately, scientists in the fields of AI, computing and nanoscience are working to overcome these challenges, and they are using their brains as their models.

That is because the circuits, or neurons, in the have a key advantage over today’s computer circuits: they can store information and process it in the same place. This makes them exceptionally fast and energy efficient. That is why scientists are now exploring how to use materials measured in billionths of a meter— nanomaterials—to construct circuits that work like our neurons. To do so successfully, however, scientists must understand precisely what is happening within these nanomaterial circuits at the atomic level.

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Researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have developed a comprehensive plan to introduce perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells into the marketplace, setting the stage for a world energized by widespread, cost-effective renewable energy, both in Saudi Arabia and globally.

The authors of the article, published in esteemed journal Science, include Prof. Stefaan De Wolf and his research team at the KAUST Solar Center. The team is working on improving solar efficiency to meet Saudi Arabia’ solar targets.

Perovskite/silicon tandem technology combines the strengths of two materials – perovskite’s efficient light absorption and silicon’s long-term stability – to achieve record-breaking efficiency. In 2023, the De Wolf laboratory reported two world records for power conversion efficiency, with five achieved globally in the same year, showing rapid progress in perovskite/silicon tandem technology.

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Until recently, chalcopyrite-based solar cells have achieved a maximum energy conversion efficiency of 23.35%, as reported in 2019 by Solar Frontier, a former Solar Energy company based in Japan. Further boosting this efficiency, however, has so far proved challenging.

Researchers at Uppsala University and at the First Solar European Technology Center AB (former Evolar AB) in Sweden recently attained a higher efficiency of 23.64% in chalcopyrite-based . This efficiency, reported in Nature Energy, was achieved using two primary techniques, namely high-concentration silver alloying and steep back-contact gallium grading.

“A primary objective of our study was to increase the efficiency of CIGS-based thin-film solar cells to ultimately lower the price per Watt-peak of corresponding large-scale modules,” Jan Keller, first author of the paper, told Phys.org. “Our work makes use of the findings from many research groups around the world, obtained during the last decades.”

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There is no doubt that water is significant. Without it, life would never have begun, let alone continue today—not to mention its role in the environment itself, with oceans covering over 70% of Earth.

But despite its ubiquity, liquid water features some electronic intricacies that have long puzzled scientists in chemistry, physics, and technology. For example, the , i.e., the energy stabilization undergone by a free electron when captured by water, has remained poorly characterized from an experimental point of view.

Even today’s most accurate electronic structure has been unable to clarify the picture, which means that important physical quantities like the energy at which electrons from external sources can be injected in liquid water remain elusive. These properties are crucial for understanding the behavior of electrons in water and could play a role in , environmental cycles, and technological applications like solar energy conversion.

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Perovskites, a broad class of compounds with a particular kind of crystal structure, have long been seen as a promising alternative or supplement to today’s silicon or cadmium telluride solar panels. They could be far more lightweight and inexpensive, and could be coated onto virtually any substrate, including paper or flexible plastic that could be rolled up for easy transport.

In their efficiency at converting sunlight to electricity, perovskites are becoming comparable to silicon, whose manufacture still requires long, complex, and energy-intensive processes. One big remaining drawback is longevity: They tend to break down in a matter of months to years, while silicon can last more than two decades. And their efficiency over large module areas still lags behind silicon.

Now, a team of researchers at MIT and several other institutions has revealed ways to optimize efficiency and better control degradation, by engineering the nanoscale structure of perovskite devices.

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Uppsala University is the new world record holder for electrical energy generation from copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar cells. The new world record is 23.64% efficiency. The measurement was made by an independent institute, and the results are published in Nature Energy.

The record results from a collaboration between the company First Solar European Technology Center (formerly known as Evolar) and solar cell researchers at Uppsala University.

“The measurements that we have made ourselves for this solar cell and other solar cells produced recently are within the margin of error for the independent measurement. That measurement will also be used for an internal calibration of our own measurement methods,” says Marika Edoff, Professor of Solar Cell Technology at Uppsala University, who is responsible for the study.

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Physicists at Paderborn University have enhanced solar cell efficiency significantly using tetracene, an organic material, based on complex computer simulations. They discovered that defects at the tetracene-silicon interface boost energy transfer, promising a new solar cell design with drastically improved performance.

Physicists at Paderborn University have used complex computer simulations to create a novel solar cell design that boasts substantially higher efficiency than existing options. The enhancement in performance is attributed to a slender coating of an organic compound named tetracene. The results have recently been published in the renowned journal Physical Review Letters.

“The annual energy of solar radiation on Earth amounts to over one trillion kilowatt-hours and thus exceeds the global energy demand by more than 5,000 times. Photovoltaics, i.e. the generation of electricity from sunlight, therefore offers a large and still largely untapped potential for the supply of clean and renewable energy. Silicon solar cells used for this purpose currently dominate the market, but have efficiency limits,” explains Prof Dr Wolf Gero Schmidt, physicist and Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Paderborn University. One reason for this is that some of the energy from short-wave radiation is not converted into electricity, but into unwanted heat.

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