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Researchers have developed transparent solar panels that can be used as glass windows in our homes or even in our phone screens.
For the smart buildings of the future.
There's a huge untapped potential for solar energy across America's shining skyscrapers.
We're getting closer to the ideal silicon solar cell.
Another confirmation that solar energy is moving fast.
Fossil fuels could soon be a thing of the past.
On the desk of Seokheun "Sean" Choi sits a 3x3 array that at first glance looks like a lemon squeezer. It is, in fact, a solar panel but not like any you've seen or heard about before. Instead of using semiconductors like silicon crystals to convert sunlight into electricity, the array employs a complex system that nurtures cyanobacteria -- beings whose metabolism create free electrons which can be harnessed.
Despite solar cells made with perovskite recently crossed the 20 percent efficiency mark, researchers say there's still room to improve if only they knew how charge flows at the nanometer scale. They just had to ask.
There's an inherent flaw in solar cells: the metal wiring that's quintessential to harnessing the electrons reflects the incoming light, acting like a mirror. Now, must people would brush off this issue and leave it like that. It's a necessary trade off. But a team at Stanford University devised an elegant chemical technique that basically hides the wiring with silicon, away from the light while preserving energy harnessing. Metal wires cover 5 to 10 percent of a solar cell's surface. Now, in the same area more light can be absorbed, hence more electricity generated which jumps the efficiency. Of course, this also means cheaper solar panels -- if only the chemical technique is covered by the recurring costs of increased efficiency.
University of Michigan researchers have devised what looks like the world's first fully transparent solar cell. Think of all of those tall glass buildings; wouldn't it be nice if all that incoming solar energy was harvested somehow? Likewise, why not let your smartphone charge up a bit while it's taking a tan. Of course this isn't a new idea, but previous attempts are rather unattractive because the compromise makes windows too shady or dark. After all, the purpose of a window is to let light in, not make energy. Ideally, you'd want them harness energy as well, complementary. The new system devised at UM is exciting because it offers exactly this: energy generation, with no compromise in visibility.
The most efficient solar cells are those that convert incoming concentrated solar power via lenses, the sort you see on the International Space Station or in the sun-soaked Middle East where Shams 1, a 100 MW CSP plant – the largest in the world – operates, powering 20,000 United Arab Emirates homes. Because of their complex nature, […]
Solar cell technology has improved dramatically over the past couple of year, yet it will be a long time before multi-junction cells – then kind that can reach efficiency well over 40% – will become affordable to small home owners or even large scale installation. New methods are always explored, however, each with its own angle […]
Apart from both being shiny, it’s hard to see any connection between a Blu-ray disk and a solar panel. Northwestern University researchers thought outside the box, however, and used the disk’s tiny stamped grooves and pits to make molds for solar panels. Because of the resulting structure’s geometry, the solar cells were able to absorb […]
Lead-acid car batteries used to be the norm, but luckily we’re seeing a massive shift towards more efficient and environmentally friendly alternatives like lithium-ion. Still, there are fleets of hundreds of millions of cars that still employ these archaic and toxic batteries. Typically, manufacturers try to have car owners bring their old lead-acid batteries, which […]
Researchers at University of Sheffield demonstrate a perovskite spray-on solar cell for the first time. Also, this is the first time rated efficiency for a spray-on solar cell tops two figures in efficiency, marking an important milestone and breakthrough in the field.
Austrlian researchers have successfully developed transparent, ultra-thin, foldable solar cells.
While scientists have been studying and incrementally increasing solar cell efficiency, we’ve yet to reach nature’s magnitude of solar energy conversion through photosynthesis. Artificial photosynthesis is a goal in alternative energy research, yet the process is extremely difficult to mimic since, in nature, the process involves numerous stages and transformation of matter and energy. Purdue University […]
A crystal known to science for more than a century has only in recent years become recognized for its use in harvesting solar power. Since the first successful usage of perovskite in solar cells in 2009, the advances in the field have grown exponentially over time, making it a potential candidate for revamping the solar […]
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign report they’ve devised a new type of highly efficient solar cell that is potentially easier to manufacture and cheaper than cells of similar performance. The stacked cell allows photon energy to be garnered from across the whole solar spectrum, and this new design makes use of a […]
The most basic principle of a solar cell is that it works by transferring the energy from an incoming photon (light) to a molecule, which causes one or more electrons to become displaced until an electrical current is formed. That’s the absolute gist of it, only besides electricity, some of the incoming photon energy gets […]
Scientists have made great efforts to discover a material that can be used to both absorb and emit light. A fluke may have suffice, since researchers at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore discovered by accident a material that can be used to work as a solar panel, harnessing energy from the sun during the […]
Every time a new manufacturing or development technology concerning solar cells was introduced, the futurists and tech pundits were quick to hail the coming of a new generation. The first were the monocrystal silicon cells doped with Phosphorus and Boron in a pn-junction; these are expensive to produce, yet comprise 80% of the total solar panel […]
The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, Soitec, CEA-Leti and the Helmholtz Center Berlin jointly announced today having achieved a new world record for solar cell efficiency: 44.7% That means that 44.7% of all solar energy (from the Ultraviolet to the Infrared) is gathered and transformed into electricity. After going into research just three […]
For some years now, scientists have been exploring the use of quantum dots as the basis for a novel type of solar cell. The advantages over conventional solar photovoltaic cells are numerous, minus one aspect: efficiency, which is actually the most important one. A new technique developed at MIT labs that uses quantum dots in […]
One of the biggest hurdles the solar energy industry currently faces is efficiently transforming the incoming energy from the sun’s rays. Vast fields of solar panels are a common sight, but truth of the matter is their energy output is quite low, which puts them at a technical and economic disadvantage from other renewable solutions […]
We’ve never shun away from praising the almost miraculous properties of graphene, the wonder material set to become even more paradigm shifting than plastic. Graphene has found been found to have the potential to revolutionize a myriad of scientific fields, from genetics, to electronics, to nanotech, to security, to just about anything you could think of. The energy […]
While we all have to recognize the huge potential that solar energy brings us, we also have to say that sadly, so far, we’re not very effective at harnessing this energy. The best modern silicon and indium-tin-oxide-based solar cells are approaching the theoretical limit of 33.7% efficiency. A big breakthrough The team led by Stephen […]
The new architecture, depicted in the picture below can exceed a 40 percent conversion efficiency, and even when irradiated from the side it generates solar conversion efficiencies that rival, and may eventually surpass, even the most ultra-efficient photovolataics. The new cell was developed by researchers working on the David Ben-Gurion National Solar Research Center, and […]
Scientists at Stanford University have successfully devised the world’s first solar cell made entirely out of carbon. This alternative to typical silicon solar panels is not only a lot cheaper to produce, but also a lot less simpler to use. Such carbon cells can be coated on any surface and turn it into a solar […]
In a fantastic breakthrough in solar energy, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have devised solar cells using nanotechnology which have had a recorded efficiency as high as 18.2%. Now, this alone is far from being deemed impressive, considering the current most efficient solar cells are 35% plus. What […]
One of the cutting edge technologies currently used today in manufacturing allows for printing materials directly onto a surface to create electrically functioning devices which are very thin and flexible. The best example of such an application are organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), widely used as displays for most new generation smartphones commercially available now. The […]
Trees employ a fractal structure of branches to twigs to spread a wide array of leaves for maximized sunlight collection. Similarly, chemists at University of California, Davis developed a set of microscopic “trees” made out of silver, which the researchers claim might well form the basis for a new range of highly efficient solar cells […]
Researchers have successfully managed to create a “solar paint” made out of quantum dots, which exhibits similar properties to multifilm solar cell architectures. The later are sophisticated, expensive and require a lot of time to deploy; the paint can be easily applied to basically any surface, like a house’s roof, and prepare it to easily generate […]
