A new discovery from a chemist at the University of Texas at Austin may allow photovoltaic solar cells to double their efficiency, thus providing loads more electrical power from regular sunlight.
Not only that, but it’s way cheap. Chemistry professor Xiaoyang Zhu and his team discovered that an organic plastic semiconductor could double the number of electrons harvested out of one photon of sunlight. Yep, plastic.
An issue with regular photovoltaic panels is that much of the energy delivered by sunlight comes in the form of “hot” electrons, which are too high-energy to be converted to electricity in silicon and are instead lost as heat. For that reason, the max insolation-to-electricity efficiency of a silicon solar cell used today is considered to be about 31%. Capturing those hot electrons could boost it to 66%.
This is a HUGE upgrade in efficiency. We’re almost there.
“And, now, with new developments from chemist Xiaoyang Zhu at the University of Texas, solar cells can upgrade from their solar efficiency current limit of 30% to more than 60%. To increase the cells efficiency, Zhu studied capturing hot electrons (energy that is too high to be turned into usable electricity which then escapes) with quantum dots.”
(via Quantum Dot Research leads to More Efficient Solar Cells | ArchDaily the best of Architecture)
I have posted about this already but I did not know that there was going to be that much of a jump in efficiency. There are still kinks to be worked out but its a jump in the right direction.
