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Sunny times ahead for cheaper solar power
March 27, 2003Greater use of clean electricity from the sun should be a step closer, thanks to new research carried out in the UK.
The research has shown how the cost of generating solar electricity can be reduced, laying the foundation for a major expansion in the use of this sustainable energy technology.
The project has been undertaken by a team of physicists, chemists, material scientists and engineers at Sheffield Hallam University, with funding from the Swindon-based Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
Electricity generation through the interaction of the sun's heat and light with semiconductors is called photovoltaics (PV). Although PV's environmental benefits are well-known, take-up of the technology has been limited by the relatively high cost of the solar cells that incorporate these semiconductors.
The team at Sheffield Hallam University has been exploring a range of options for cutting costs. These include the use of a low-cost semiconductor production method called electrodeposition, less reliance on expensive semiconductor materials, and the identification of alternative solar cell devices and manufacturing techniques offering higher conversion efficiencies.
Higher conversion efficiencies mean that more power can be produced per cell and that the cost of each unit of electricity generated is reduced. In the past, limited understanding of the scientific principles underlying PV meant that average solar cell efficiencies only improved from 15.9% to 16.5% between 1992 and 2001 for cadmium telluride based solar cells. By formulating a new "model" to describe the photovoltaic activity of these solar cells, the Sheffield Hallam Team has significantly improved this understanding and produced devices with 18% efficiency. This has opened up the prospect of new solar cells being developed commercially with higher conversion efficiencies than those currently available.
The research has been led by Dr I M Dharmadasa, who says: "We've already applied for two patents and are preparing the final draft of the third patent in connection with our work, but there's a lot more science to be explored that could increase conversion efficiencies to over 20% in the near future".
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
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Polymer electric storage, flexible and adaptable
The proliferation of solar, wind and even tidal electric generation and the rapid emergence of hybrid electric automobiles demands flexible and reliable methods of high-capacity electrical storage. Now a team of Penn State materials scientists is developing ferroelectric polymer-based capacitors that can deliver power more rapidly and are much lighter than conventional batteries.
Flexible nanoantenna arrays capture abundant solar energy
Researchers have devised an inexpensive way to produce plastic sheets containing billions of nanoantennas that collect heat energy generated by the sun and other sources. The technology, developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory, is the first step toward a solar energy collector that could be mass-produced on flexible materials.
'Nanonet' circuits closer to making flexible electronics reality
Researchers have overcome a major obstacle in producing transistors from networks of carbon nanotubes, a technology that could make it possible to print circuits on plastic sheets for applications including flexible displays and an electronic skin to cover an entire aircraft to monitor crack formation.
A Colorful Approach to Solar Energy
Revisiting a once-abandoned technique, engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have successfully created a sophisticated, yet affordable, method to turn ordinary glass into a high-tech solar concentrator.
Research helps understand factors that influence efficiency of organic-based devices
Organic-based devices, such as organic light-emitting diodes, require a transparent conductive layer with a high work function, meaning it promotes injection of electron holes into an organic layer to produce more light.
Visualizing atomic-scale acoustic wavesin nanostructures
Acoustic waves play many everyday roles - from communication between people to ultrasound imaging. Now the highest frequency acoustic waves in materials, with nearly atomic-scale wavelengths, promise to be useful probes of nanostructures such as LED lights.
New efficiency benchmark for dye-sensitized solar cells
In a paper published online June 29 in the journal Nature Materials, EPFL professor Michael Graetzel, Shaik Zakeeruddin and colleagues from the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have achieved a record light conversion efficiency of 8.2% in solvent-free dye-sensitized solar cells.
Perfecting a solar cell by adding imperfections
Nanotechnology is paving the way toward improved solar cells. New research shows that a film of carbon nanotubes may be able to replace two of the layers normally used in a solar cell, with improved performance at a lower cost. Researchers have found a surprising way to give the nanotubes the properties they need: add defects.
Testing, radiation testing: Northwestern transistors on space station
Transistors based on a new kind of material created by Northwestern University researchers have been lifted into outer space on the space shuttle Endeavour and attached to the outside of the International Space Station for radiation testing.
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