solar cells tagged posts

A figure showing the crystal structure of strontium vanadate(orange) and calcium vanadate (blue). The red dots are oxygen atoms arranged in 8 octohedra surrounding a single strontium or calcium atom. Vanadium atoms can be seen inside each octahedron. Credit: Lei Zhang/Penn State

Indium tin oxide (ITO), the transparent conductor that is now used for more than 90% of the display market, has been the dominant material for the past 60 years. But in the last decade, the price of indium has increased dramatically. Displays and touchscreen modules have become a main cost driver in mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, making up close to 40% of the cost...

A typical solar cell, at max, converts <33% of light into electricity, so researchers have been working to find ways to surpass this limit. In the past, scientists have put an extra photon upconversion filter before or after the cell to catch the low energy, unused light and convert it into usable, high-energy light. But, FSU Assistant Prof Hanson wanted to integrate this process directly into the cell.

The researchers did this by using self-assembly. Through a soaking procedure, they assembled 2 molecules, an acceptor and sensitizer, on a surface which work in concert to perform photon upconverion, ie via triplet–triplet annihilation (TTA-UC) combining 2 low energy, green photons to generate a higher energy, blue photon, which can then be used to generate electricity...

A high-quality mixed-organic-cation perovskite (MA)x(FA)1−xPbI3 is prepared from a phase-pure non-stoichiometric intermediate complex (FAI)1−x−PbI2. The phase-pure (FAI)1−x−PbI2 probably facilitates homogenous nucleation and modulates the growth kinetics during the crystallization of (MA)x(FA)1−xPbI3. This strategy can be expected to pave the way for the development of mixed-organic-cation perovskite solar cells.

NIMS researchers have developed the world’s first method to fabricate high-quality perovskite materials capable of utilizing long-wavelength sunlight of 800 nm or longer...

Optical absorption edge versus free electron density for the ZnSnN2 films. The calculated dependence of absorption on free electron density is also shown for the two extreme cases of cation ordered (blue dashed line) and fully cation disordered (red solid line) ZnSnN2. The calculations are performed using k·P band structures fitted to the DFT results close to the Γ point. The square points correspond to samples grown under less metal-rich conditions and triangular points to those grown under more metal-rich conditions.

University of Liverpool has demonstrated a new semiconductor material made from abundant elements which can be “tuned” for use in solar cells instead of rare elements...