solar cells tagged posts

The same dirt that clings to astronauts’ boots may one day keep their lights on. In a study publishing April 3 in the Cell Press journal Device, researchers created solar cells made out of simulated Moon dust. The cells convert sunlight into energy efficiently, withstand radiation damage, and mitigate the need for transporting heavy materials into space, offering a potential solution to one of space exploration’s biggest challenges: reliable energy sources.

“The solar cells used in space now are amazing, reaching efficiencies of 30% to even 40%, but that efficiency comes with a price,” says lead researcher Felix Lang of the University of Potsdam, Germany...

Solar technologies have become increasingly advanced over the years, with the discovery of new photovoltaic materials and designs. While solar cells based on a mixture of organic and inorganic halide perovskite materials have been the topic of numerous research studies and achieved promising performances, these cells are often difficult to fabricate on a large-scale.

Researchers at Chonnam University in South Korea recently introduced an alternative solar cell design fully based on inorganic perovskites. Their solar cells, introduced in Nature Energy, could be easier to fabricate on a large-scale, while nonetheless achieving promising power conversion efficiencies (PCEs).

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Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) made a technological breakthrough and constructed a perovskite solar cell with the dual benefits of being both highly efficient and highly stable.

The work was done in collaboration with scientists from the University of Toledo, the University of Colorado-Boulder, and the University of California-San Diego.

A unique architectural structure enabled the researchers to record a certified stabilized efficiency of 24% under 1-sun illumination, making it the highest reported of its kind...

Chemists could yield future devices such as next-gen displays and solar cells. A new study introduces a breakthrough in making nanocrystals function together electronically. The research may open the doors to future devices with new abilities.

You can carry an entire computer in your pocket today because the technological building blocks have been getting smaller and smaller since the 1950s...