UCLA produces transparent solar cells that harness infrared light. A UCLA team has developed a new type of solar cell that is nearly 70 percent transparent to the naked eye. The plastic cells, which use infrared instead of visible light, are also more economical than other types of cells because they are made by an inexpensive polymer solution process and nanowire technology, potentially paving the way for cheaper solar windows. Solar panels are great. The only problem is that they take up quite a bit of space. To run a building off of solar panels you’d pretty much have to cover it with them.
Since people like things called “windows,” that’s usually not an option. Even running small devices off the sun is a bother since the panels are often bulky, take up areas wanted for other purposes or need to be placed somewhere really inconvenient, like the back of a phone. If only solar cells were thin films that you could see through, then you could turn windows and tablet displays into solar panels. Source: UCLA. Doping leads to new efficiency record for graphene solar cells. A new efficiency record of 8.6 percent for graphene solar cells using graphene doped with TFSA (Photo: Shutterstock) Doping graphene with trifluoromethanesulfonyl-amide (TFSA) has enabled researchers at the University of Florida (UF) to set a new efficiency record for graphene solar cells.
While the record-breaking efficiency of 8.6 percent is well short of the efficiencies seen in other types of solar cells, it is a big improvement over previous graphene solar cells that saw efficiencies ranging up to 2.9 percent. The development provides hope for cheaper, durable graphene solar cells in the future. The prototype solar cell created in the UF’s physics department consists of a 5 mm square (0.2 in square) rigid wafer of silicon coated with a single layer of graphene that has been chemically treated with TFSA.
The UF team’s results are published in the online edition of Nano Letters. Source: University of Florida About the Author Post a CommentRelated Articles. SUNDAY SDN Company Ltd. New efficiency record for flexible CIGS solar cells. Flexible thin film CIGS solar cell on polymer substrate developed at Empa (Photo: Empa) Swiss researchers have claimed a new world record efficiency of 18.7% for flexible copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS) solar cells on plastics. Flexible CIGS solar cells have the potential to drive down the price of solar electricity because they are cheaper to produce and this latest breakthrough brings them closer to the highest efficiency levels achieved by crystalline silicon and rigid CIGS cells. "The new record value for flexible CIGS solar cells of 18.7% nearly closes the "efficiency gap" to solar cells based on polycrystalline silicon (Si) wafers or CIGS thin film cells on glass", says Ayodhya N.
Tiwari, who heads-up the research team at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) Thin Film and Photovoltaics lab. Post a CommentRelated Articles Just enter your friends and your email address into the form below For multiple addresses, separate each with a comma. TOPSUN. Hanwha Solar - a global leading solar company. Dongbu Group.