Nanowerk December 28, 2021 Organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite solar cells, considered as a competitive alternative to conventional silicon solar cells, are prone to degrade when exposed to air. An international team of researchers (China, Greece, Australia) introduced PVP to the methylammonium lead iodide perovskite precursor. It can control crystal growth and endow the devices with self-healing ability in a moisture environment. When it was introduced in perovskite solar cells, it acted as a protective armor with an automatic blood backflow effect against water vapor. In addition, PVP can improve crystal growth with fewer defects and larger grains…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Category Archives: Solar cells
Lead-free rare-earth-based double perovskite nanocrystals with near-infrared emission
Nanowerk September 9, 2021 Researchers in China synthesized all-inorganic rare-earth-based Cs2NaEr1−xBxCl6 double perovskite nanocrystals. The Cs2NaErCl6 NCs showed good air stability and emitted a sharp NIR photoluminescence at telecommunication wavelength of 1543 nm and its average lifetime is 35.7 µs. For Cs2NaEr0.5Sb0.5Cl6 nanocrystals NIR photoluminescence could be enhanced 23-fold with the lifetime being 119.1 µs. Femtosecond transient absorption measurements proved that a long-lifetime trap state promotes NIR emitting in the mixed Sb/Er double perovskite nanocrystals…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Outstanding organic solar cells’ performance achieved by using new technology
EurekAlert June 23, 2021 Although the organic photovoltaic (OPV) elements are lighter, more flexible, and cheaper to produce, their efficiency still falls behind that of other photovoltaic technologies. An international team of researchers (Saudi Arabia, Lithuania, Greece) synthesised a material, which self-assembles into a monolayer that can cover a variety of surfaces and function as a hole-transporting layer in a solar element. They made some modifications in the material used in self-assembling molecular-thin layer (SAM) formation to tailor it for organic solar elements. The organic solar cell using Br-2PACz molecule-thin coating as a hole-transporting layer achieved a power conversion efficiency […]
The solar cell you can print
EurekAlert July 27, 2020 Researchers in the UK are working on a grant drive next-generation solar technology into new applications. Their performance competes with current technology, but they have the advantages of being flexible, lightweight, cheap to produce, and they can be printed directly onto products during manufacture. The goal is to Deliver the fundamental science and engineering to underpin the development of these promising solar technologies; Develop low-carbon, low-cost manufacturing methods that will enable them to be produced at scale; Develop prototypes to show how they can provide solar power in new applications…read more.
Engineers make a promising material stable enough for use in solar cells
Science Daily April 29, 2020 Inherently soft crystal lattice of Halide perovskites allows greater tolerance to lattice mismatch, making them promising for heterostructure formation and semiconductor integration. However, their high intrinsic ion mobility, which leads to interdiffusion and large junction widths and their poor chemical stability, epitaxial growth of atomically sharp heterostructures of halide perovskites has not yet been achieved. An international team of researchers (USA – Perdue University, MIT, UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, China) has developed a strategy to substantially inhibit in-plane ion diffusion in two-dimensional halide perovskites by incorporating rigid π-conjugated organic ligands. They have demonstrated […]
After 40 Years of Hunting, Scientists Identify a Key Flaw in Solar Panel Efficiency
Science Alert February 13, 2020 Silicon solar cells containing boron and oxygen suffer from Light Induced Degradation which could be responsible for the 2 percent efficiency drop that solar cells can see in the first hours of use. Using deep level transient spectroscopy and photoluminescence an international team of researchers (UK, Portugal, Belarus, Australia) has observed the conversion of a deep boron-di-oxygen-related donor state into a shallow acceptor which correlates with the change in the lifetime of minority carriers in the silicon. They propose structures of the BsO2 defect which match the experimental findings and hypothesize that the dominant recombination […]
Anti-solar cells: A photovoltaic cell that works at night
Science Daily January 29, 2020 Photovoltaics can generate electricity during daylight hours. Researchers at the University of Maryland consider an alternative photovoltaic concept that uses the earth as a heat source and the night sky as a heat sink, resulting in a “nighttime photovoltaic cell” that employs thermoradiative photovoltaics and concepts from the advancing field of radiative cooling. In this perspective, they discuss the principles of thermoradiative photovoltaics, the theoretical limits of applying this concept to coupling with deep space, the potential of advanced radiative cooling techniques to enhance their performance, and a discussion of the practical limits, scalability, and […]
Solar cells with new interfaces
EurekAlert September 30, 2019 Perovskite solar cells are still unstable due to several internal degradation factors. Most approaches for solving problems of stability and improvement of the efficiency of perovskite cells concern the optimization of the chemical composition of perovskite. An international team of researchers (Italy, Russia) proposed an original approach to design perovskite solar cells with improved performances, namely the use of two-dimensional Titanium-Carbide compounds called MXenes to dope perovskite. They incorporated microscopic amount of MXenes in the perovskite solar cell. As a result, they achieved increase of the efficiency for devices by more than 25 %, compared to […]