Solar panels are mainly associated with silicon materials, however, it is far from the only concept that is possible. In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about perovskites, which bring an advantage in sensitivity to other components of light (which is why they are often tried to combine with silicon), but so far most of them suffer from poor service life. Another alternative is organic solar cells (OPV). Dr. Christoph Brabec from FAU and his team have developed a new type of organic cells that further increases the efficiency, which is beginning to approach those commonly used today.
Organic cells can be flexible and transparent, thanks to which they can be used, for example, on windows, where they can also have a tinting function, theoretically they could also have other uses in agriculture as coverings that would transmit part of the light and convert the other part into electricity. An advantage could also be more ecological production and thus less negative impacts on the environment (ie their faster “payback” in the ecological sense). As was the case with perovskites, the initial problem here is the efficiency of the first generations. It was only a few years ago that it finally started moving even in double digits. Brabc’s latest venture even achieves that record efficiency of 14.46%.
Although this number is still a few percentage points lower than for silicon panels (in percentage terms we would talk about 20-35%), however, it is not as big a difference as in the past. The team improved the active materials, while also reducing the area of inactive parts thanks to the use of a thinner laser that divides the panel area into individual cells. Work was also done on improving the homogeneity of the surface layers. The unanswered question is the lifespan and when something like this might hit the market.
2023-12-20 11:27:05
#Organic #solar #cells #achieved #record #efficiency
