Breakthrough Could Double Solar Energy Output
December 18th, 2011Via: Science Daily:
The efficiency of conventional solar cells could be significantly increased, according to new research on the mechanisms of solar energy conversion led by chemist Xiaoyang Zhu at The University of Texas at Austin.
Zhu and his team have discovered that it’s possible to double the number of electrons harvested from one photon of sunlight using an organic plastic semiconductor material.
“Plastic semiconductor solar cell production has great advantages, one of which is low cost,” said Zhu, a professor of chemistry. “Combined with the vast capabilities for molecular design and synthesis, our discovery opens the door to an exciting new approach for solar energy conversion, leading to much higher efficiencies.”
Zhu and his team published their groundbreaking discovery Dec. 16 in Science.
The maximum theoretical efficiency of the silicon solar cell in use today is approximately 31 percent, because much of the sun’s energy hitting the cell is too high to be turned into usable electricity. That energy, in the form of “hot electrons,” is instead lost as heat. Capturing hot electrons could potentially increase the efficiency of solar-to-electric power conversion to as high as 66 percent.
