Monday November 03, 2008

More efficient solar panels, cells possible with new material that absorbs entire spectrum

peakoil.com -> eetimes.com :

Current solar materials must be chosen to match a specific wavelength of sunlight, but a new hybrid inorganic/organic material could usher in solar cells that absorb all solar wavelengths. The new polymer could also enable much more efficient charge separation since electrons dislodged by light in the material remain free much longer than in conventional solar cells.

The inorganic/organic hybrid polymer material can be made into polymer blends that can "absorb essentially across the entire solar spectrum - they go from about 300 nanometers down to about 10,000 nanometers," said professor Malcolm Chisholm of Ohio State University. Solar materials work by using incident light to boost the energy of electrons, thereby separating them from the hull of atoms in the material. They can then be harvested to generate electricity. However, separated electrons fall back into their host atoms if not collected quickly. Usually, solar materials either fluoresce (called singlet emisson) or phosphoresce (triplet emission). The new hybrid material does both, further increasing potential efficiency. The new material was designed at the Ohio Supercomputer Center and synthesized at the National Taiwan University.

- Now I'm not that much of an expert on solar cell materials and how this solar power technology actually works at the lowest atomic level, but this "hybrid material" sounds promising. Hope we can see good execution with a successful commercialization of this technology. We've had numerous promises of breakthroughs in solar panel efficiency in the past, and even at this stage it is hard to pick out a clear winner. But it looks like the bar is being raised steadily over the years - 15-20% solar conversion efficiency used to be considered pretty good, now the R&D people seem to be aiming for 30-40%. The solar race is still on - may the best technology win.

See also :

1. Spray-on solar cells breakthrough
2. Synthetic molecules capture solar energy
3. Silicon vs. CIGS: With solar energy, the issue is material
4. 40% efficient solar cells to be used for solar electricity

(2008-11-03 08:42:14 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

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