A team co-led by the University of Surrey has successfully increased the levels of energy absorbed by wafer-thin photovoltaic panels by 25%.
From: The
University of Surrey
March 29, 2022 -- Their solar panels, just one
micrometre thick (1μm), convert light into electricity more efficiently than
others as thin and pave the way to make it easier to generate more clean, green
energy.
In a paper published in
the American Chemical Society’s Photonics journal, the team
detail how they used characteristics of sunlight to design a disordered
honeycomb layer which lies on top of a wafer of silicon. Their approach is
echoed in nature in the design of butterfly wings and bird eyes. The innovative
honeycomb design enables light absorption from any angle and traps light inside
the solar cell, enabling more energy to be generated.
Dr Marian Florescu from the
University of Surrey’s Advanced
Technology Institute (ATI) said, “One of the challenges of working
with silicon is that nearly a third of light bounces straight off it without
being absorbed and the energy harnessed. A textured layer across the silicon
helps tackle this and our disordered, yet hyper-uniform, honeycomb design is
particularly successful.”
The team of researchers
from the University of Surrey and Imperial College London worked with
experimental collaborators at AMOLF in Amsterdam to design, model and create
the new ultra-thin photovoltaic.
In the laboratory, they
achieved absorption rates of 26.3 mA/cm2, a 25% increase on the previous record
of 19.72 mA/cm2 achieved in 2017. They secured an efficiency of 21% but
anticipate that further improvements will push the figure higher, resulting in
efficiencies that are significantly better than many commercially available
photovoltaics.
Dr Florescu continued,
“There’s enormous potential for using ultra-thin photovoltaics. For example,
given how light they are, they will be particularly useful in space and could
make new extra-terrestrial projects viable. Since they use so much less
silicon, we are hoping there will be cost savings here on Earth as well, plus
there could be potential to bring more benefits from the Internet of Things and
to create zero-energy buildings powered locally.”
As well as benefiting
solar power generation, the findings could also benefit other industries where
light management and surface engineering are crucial, for example,
photo-electrochemistry, solid-state light emission and photodetectors.
Next steps for the team
will include investigating commercial partners and developing manufacturing
techniques.
https://www.surrey.ac.uk/news/scientists-achieve-record-efficiency-ultra-thin-solar-panels
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