Solar power technology continues to advance, with the key developments based on the race to replace silicon with perovskite. The solar industry is fast-moving, and solar power development is an area rich in scientific developments.
Digital Journal take a look at three recent research successes.
Breaking records
Researchers have created the highest efficiency 1-sun solar cell. The cell has a record 39.5 percent efficiency under 1-sun global illumination. This is the highest efficiency solar cell of any type, as measured using standard 1-sun conditions. The breakthrough comes from the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
According to lead researcher Myles Steiner: “The new cell is more efficient and has a simpler design that may be useful for a variety of new applications, such as highly area-constrained applications or low-radiation space applications.”
Assessing solar cells under 1-sun conditions is a standard measure. The improvement in efficiency arose from research into “quantum well” solar cells, which utilize very thin layers to modify solar cell properties.
With the new development, scientists developed a quantum well solar cell with enhanced performance and implemented it into a device with three junctions with different bandgaps, where each junction is tuned to capture and utilize a different slice of the solar spectrum.
The research appears in the journal Joule, with the paper titled “Triple-junction solar cells with 39.5% terrestrial and 34.2% space efficiency enabled by thick quantum well superlattices.”
Lowering costs
An original approach to mass-producing low-cost solar cell foundation blocks holds the promise of pushing the wide adoption of solar panels made from perovskite ink. Perovskites are semiconductors with a special crystal structure that makes them well suited for solar cell technology.
According to the developers at the University of Surrey the perovskite ink produces a fast and reproducible way to reliably fabricate these solar cell building blocks on a mass scale. Perovskite cells harvest light through the visible part of the solar spectrum, which has more energy.
The development is expanded upon in the journal Scientific Reports, in the paper “A route towards the fabrication of large-scale and high-quality perovskite films for optoelectronic devices.”
Lasting power
Scientists at Princeton University, Engineering School have developed the first perovskite solar cell with a commercially viable lifetime. It is projected that the device can perform above industry standards for around 30 years, far more than the 20 years used as a threshold for viability for solar cells.
Perovskites can be made flexible and transparent, extending solar power. However ,the materials are fragile, and this affects their anticipated lifetime. This has been overcome with the current research, through the development of an ultra-thin capping layer between two key components. These are: the absorbing perovskite layer and a charge-carrying layer made from cupric salt and other substances.
To optimise the new layer, the researchers ran various minute details in the geometry, varying the number of layers, and trying out dozens of material combinations.
The research features in the journal Science, headed “Accelerated aging of all-inorganic, interface-stabilized perovskite solar cells.”
