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weatheriscool
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Solar energy news and discussion

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Building efficient and thermally stable perovskite solar cells using Ti₃C₂TₓMXene

by University of Queensland
Credit: University of Queensland

A new generation of cheap, sustainable and efficient solar cells is a step closer, thanks to scientists at The University of Queensland.

Researchers at UQ's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) modified a nanomaterial to make solar cells as efficient as silicon-based cells, but without their high cost and complex manufacturing.

Professor Joe Shapter said the finding addressed an urgent need for alternative environmentally friendly energy sources capable of providing efficient and reliable energy production.

"Silicon-based solar cells remain the dominant first-generation product making up 90 percent of the market, but demand was high for cells that could be manufactured without their high prices and complexity," Professor Shapter said.

"Among the next-generation technologies, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have attracted enormous attention because of their high efficiency and ease of fabrication.

"The technology has undergone unprecedented rapid development in recent years.

"But the new generation of solar cells still have some drawbacks such as poor long-term stability, lead toxicity and high material costs."

Professor Shapter said his team studied a nanomaterial that showed great promise in overcoming some of the new cell's drawbacks and used doping, a common method of modifying the new cell's nanomaterial to enhance its electrical properties.
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-10-eff ... solar.html
Last edited by weatheriscool on Thu Mar 30, 2023 6:47 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Phosphorene nanoribbons live up to hype in first demonstration
https://phys.org/news/2021-12-phosphore ... -hype.html
by Imperial College London

Researchers have incorporated phosphorene nanoribbons into new types of solar cells, dramatically improving their efficiency.

Phosphorene nanoribbons (PNRs) are ribbon-like strands of the 2D material phosphorous, which, similar to graphene, are made of single-atom-thick layers of atoms. PNRs were first produced in 2019, and hundreds of theoretical studies have predicted how their properties could enhance all kinds of devices, including batteries, biomedical sensors, and quantum computers.

However, none of these predicted exciting properties have so far been demonstrated in actual devices. Now, for the first time, a team led by Imperial College London and University College London researchers has used PNRs to significantly improve the efficiency of a device—a new kind of solar cell—demonstrating that the 'wonder material' may indeed live up to its hype.

The details are published today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Lead researcher Dr. Thomas Macdonald, from the Department of Chemistry and the Centre for Processable Electronics at Imperial, said: "Hundreds of theoretical studies have foreseen the exciting properties of PNRs, but no published reports have yet demonstrated these properties, or their translation into improved device performance.
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Research team sets new efficiency record for solar cell technology
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-01-tea ... ology.html
by National University of Singapore
A research team from the National University of Singapore has set a new record in the power conversion efficiency of solar cells (in photo) made using perovskite and organic materials. Their latest work demonstrated a power conversion efficiency of 23.6%. Credit: National University of Singapore

A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has set a new record in the power conversion efficiency of solar cells made using perovskite and organic materials. This technological breakthrough paves the way for flexible, light-weight, low cost and ultra-thin photovoltaic cells which are ideal for powering vehicles, boats, blinds and other applications.

"Technologies for clean and renewable energy are extremely important for carbon reduction. Solar cells that directly convert solar energy into electricity are among the most promising clean energy technologies. High power conversion efficiency of solar cells is critical for generating more electrical power using a limited area and this, in turn, reduces the total cost of generating solar energy," explained lead researcher Presidential Young Professor Hou Yi, who is from the NUS Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and also leading a "Perovskite-based Multi-junction Solar Cells group" at the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore at NUS.

"The main motivation of this study is to improve the power conversion efficiency of perovskite/organic tandem solar cells. In our latest work, we have demonstrated a power conversion efficiency of 23.6%—this is the best performance for this type of solar cells to date," added Dr. Chen Wei, Research Fellow at the NUS Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the first author of this work.

This achievement is significant leap from the current power conversion rate of about 20% reported by other studies on perovskite/organic tandem solar cells, and is approaching the power conversion rate of 26.7% of silicon solar cells, which is the dominating solar technology in the current solar photovoltaic (PV) market.
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New technique boosts efficiency, sustainability of large-scale perovskite solar cells
https://phys.org/news/2022-01-technique ... scale.html
by Matt Shipman, North Carolina State University

An international team of researchers has demonstrated a technique for producing perovskite photovoltaic materials on an industrial scale, which will reduce the cost and improve the performance of mass-produced perovskite solar cells.

The technique is low-cost, simple, energy-efficient, and should pave the way for creating perovskite solar cells. Perovskite is of interest for solar cells because it absorbs light very efficiently. This allows for the creation of lightweight, flexible solar cells that can be incorporated into a range of technologies, such as the windows of buildings or vehicles.

"In the lab, researchers produce perovskite photovoltaic materials using a technique called spin coating, which creates a thin film of perovskite on a substrate—but only on a small scale," says Aram Amassian, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and a professor of materials science and engineering at North Carolina State University.

"We're talking about sample substrates that are only one or two centimeters square. However, people didn't think it was possible to scale spin-coating up for manufacturing, using substrates that are tens of centimeters square. Instead, people have opted for a variety of other methods. But these other methods produce perovskite photovoltaics that don't perform as well as the thin films made using spin coating and required significant research and development."
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Germany plugged in solar plants of 421.11 MW in December to boost the solar capacity installed across the country through 2021 to 5.26 GW, the Federal Network Agency said on Monday.

The new onshore wind capacity remained far behind solar power. Wind turbines with a combined output of 152.9 MW went online in December and raised the total wind capacity deployed in 2021 to almost 1.86 GW.

More than half of the new solar additions in December, or 261.21 MW, were plants connected to the grid outside of EEG tenders with ground-mounted sites accounting for only 8.73 MW of the total.

The deployment of new onshore wind capacity increased slightly in the last month of the year after recording a 36% month-on-month drop in November. The addition of new turbines is expected to speed up this year with the new capacity to be commissioned across the country seen in the range of 2.3 GW to 2.7 GW, shows a study conducted by consulting firm Deutsche WindGuard on the basis of data for already approved projects and past tenders. However, the expansion pace needs to be significantly accelerated in order to achieve the ambitious climate goals of the new government. The strategy of the coalition government envisages more than doubling onshore wind capacity to exceed 100 GW by 2030 with annual deployment set to reach about 10 GW in the last few years of the decade.
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Record efficiencies in thin film photovoltaic cells
https://phys.org/news/2022-03-efficienc ... cells.html
by AMOLF

Silicon solar cells have proven to be a top photovoltaic technology, as they use earth abundant raw materials (i.e. Si) and perform with high efficiency. However, they are based on thick, rigid and heavy wafers and can therefore only be installed in a limited number of places. One of the ways to overcome this disadvantage is to use thin membranes instead. This will reduce the amount of Si by more than 99% (dramatically saving in raw materials) and also make the cells flexible and lightweight. As such, these cells can be easily integrated into buildings, urban architecture and even small everyday gadgets. The problem is that such thin Si membranes cannot absorb light as efficiently. In fact, only 25% of the sunlight is absorbed and you can even see through them.

Using a new rationally-designed nanostructure texture, researchers from AMOLF, Surrey University and Imperial College have found a way to make the thin photovoltaic cells opaque and thus enhance their efficiency. In the lab, they found that such textured thin membranes absorb 65% of sunlight, which is very close to the ultimate theoretical absorption limit of ~70%. This is the highest light absorption ever demonstrated in such a thin Si membrane and it is, therefore, likely that flexible, light-weight and efficient Si photovoltaic cells will be developed in the near future.

How does it work?

The patterned nanostructure judiciously re-directs straight sunlight into a range of angles, thereby trapping light inside the Si membrane. With the light being trapped, it has more chances to be absorbed and the thickness of the membrane effectively increases for the light.
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Solar Cell Keeps Working Long After Sun Sets
April 5, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/948270

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) WASHINGTON, April 5, 2022 – About 750 million people in the world do not have access to electricity at night. Solar cells provide power during the day, but saving energy for later use requires substantial battery storage.

In Applied Physics Letters, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Stanford University constructed a photovoltaic cell that harvests energy from the environment during the day and night, avoiding the need for batteries altogether. The device makes use of the heat leaking from Earth back into space – energy that is on the same order of magnitude as incoming solar radiation.

At night, solar cells radiate and lose heat to the sky, reaching temperatures a few degrees below the ambient air. The device under development uses a thermoelectric module to generate voltage and current from the temperature gradient between the cell and the air. This process depends on the thermal design of the system, which includes a hot side and a cold side.

"You want the thermoelectric to have very good contact with both the cold side, which is the solar cell, and the hot side, which is the ambient environment," said author Sid Assawaworrarit. "If you don't have that, you're not going to get much power out of it."
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Quantum innovation advances low-cost alternative solar technology
https://phys.org/news/2022-04-quantum-a ... solar.html
by Tyler Irving, University of Toronto

A team of researchers from the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering has leveraged quantum mechanics to optimize the active layer within a device known as an inverted perovskite solar cell—a technology that could one day result in mass-market solar cells that a fraction of those currently on the market.
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