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Category: solar power

Nanodomains hold the key to next-generation solar cells, researchers find

A new study, published in Nature Nanotechnology and featured on the journal’s front cover this month, has uncovered insights into the tiny structures that could take solar energy to the next level.

Researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology (CEB) have found that dynamic nanodomains within lead halide perovskites—materials at the forefront of solar cell innovation—hold a key to boosting their efficiency and stability. The findings reveal the nature of these microscopic structures, and how they impact the way electrons are energized by light and transported through the material, offering insights into more efficient solar cells.

The study was led by Milos Dubajic and Professor Sam Stranks from the Optoelectronic Materials and Device Spectroscopy Group at CEB, in collaboration with an international network, with key contributions from Imperial College London, UNSW Sydney, Colorado State University, ANSTO Sydney, and synchrotron facilities in Australia, the UK, and Germany.

New passivation strategy improves scalability and efficiency of perovskite solar cells

Solar cells, devices that can convert sunlight into electrical energy, are becoming increasingly widespread, with many households and industries worldwide now relying on them as a source of electricity. While crystalline silicon-based photovoltaics and other widely available solar cells perform relatively well, manufacturing them can be expensive, and they do not perform well in low-light or other unfavorable conditions.

Modified perovskite solar cells harvest energy from indoor fluorescent lighting

When you think of solar panels, you usually picture giant cells mounted to face the sun. But what if “solar” cells could be charged using fluorescent lights?

Perovskite solar cells (PeSCs) have emerged as a lower-cost, higher-efficiency alternative to traditional silicon solar cells due to their material structure and physical flexibility. Their large power conversion efficiency rate (PCE), which is the amount of energy created from the amount of energy hitting the cell, makes PeSCs well suited to converting lower light sources into energy.

In APL Energy, researchers from National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan created that effectively convert indoor lighting into .

Scientists develop stable all-perovskite tandem solar cells

A research group led by Prof. Ge Ziyi from the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed an innovative strategy to alleviate NiOx corrosion, enabling more efficient and stable all-perovskite tandem solar cells (TSCs).

How to Build in Space — for Life on Earth

🏗️ Q: What are the potential benefits of off-worlding heavy industry to space?

A: Space-based manufacturing can produce sustainable energy, food, and water for a trillion-dollar space economy, allowing Earth to recover as a garden planet for future generations.

Space-Based Manufacturing.

🧬 Q: How can microgravity in low-Earth orbit advance biotech manufacturing?

A: Enable unique manufacturing of protein crystals, tissues, and novel drugs impossible on Earth, with high-throughput production of exceptional quality organoids for Alzheimer’s and cancer drug testing.

☀️ Q: How can space-based solar power solve Earth’s energy challenges?

Continue reading “How to Build in Space — for Life on Earth” | >

Just 2% of tidal and offshore solar energy could make a dent in carbon dioxide emissions

Harnessing just 2% of the energy potential from tidal and offshore solar sources could make a significant dent in global CO2 emissions, new research has found.

Researchers at the Universities of Strathclyde and Maine examined more than 660 assessments of offshore renewable energy (ORE) potential in more than 3,000 locations worldwide. They found that tidal and solar consistently had more energy to offer than other sources such as wind and wave, but were the subject of far less research, and consequently, remained largely untapped.

Offshore solar energy, in particular, was found to be more reliable and less variable than other sources, making it ideal for energy mixes. Despite their lower theoretical potential, wind and wave energy accounted for three-quarters of the assessments examined by the researchers.

Protective film on perovskite solar cells offers 1,000-hour durability in extreme heat and humidity

A new perovskite solar cell (PSC) demonstrates remarkable resilience even in high heat conditions, thanks to an innovative protective film. The research team suggests that these findings represent a significant step toward commercialization by addressing thermal stability issues.

A research team, led by Professor Dong Suk Kim at the UNIST Graduate School of Carbon Neutrality, in collaboration with Professor Tae Kyung Lee from Gyeongsang National University (GNU), has successfully engineered a heat-resistant PSC capable of withstanding high-temperature encapsulation processes.

This innovative solar cell demonstrated a remarkable initial efficiency of 25.56% and maintained over 85% of its initial efficiency after operating under conditions of 85°C and 85% for up to 1,000 hours. The findings are published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.

Ultrafast spin-exchange in quantum dots enhances solar energy and photochemical efficiency

Quantum dots are microscopic semiconductor crystals developed in the lab that share many properties with atoms, including the ability to absorb or emit light, a technology that Los Alamos researchers have spent nearly three decades evolving. Through carrier multiplication, in which a single absorbed photon generates two electron-hole pairs, called excitons, quantum dots have the unique ability to convert photons more efficiently to energy.

“Our work demonstrates how purely quantum mechanical spin-exchange interactions can be harnessed to enhance the efficiency of photoconversion devices or ,” says Victor Klimov, the team’s principal investigator at the Lab. “This not only deepens our fundamental understanding of quantum mechanical phenomena but also introduces a new paradigm for designing advanced materials for energy applications.”

In this latest research, published in the journal Nature Communications, Los Alamos researchers improved this ability by introducing magnetic manganese impurities into quantum dots. This novel approach to highly efficient carrier multiplication leverages ultrafast spin-exchange interactions mediated by manganese ions to capture the energy of energetic (hot) carriers generated by incident photons and convert it into additional excitons.

Study sheds light on solar farm impacts to property values

As solar energy becomes more affordable and widespread, farmland has emerged as a prime location for large-scale solar development. But with this expansion comes a persistent question: Do nearby property values suffer when solar farms move in?

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers in Virginia Tech’s Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences looked at millions of property sales and thousands of commercial solar sites to shed some light on one of the most commonly cited downsides of large-scale solar adoption.

“As the U.S. scales up renewable energy, are increasingly being sited near homes and on farmland, and this often leads to pushback from residents worried about aesthetics or property value loss,” said Chenyang Hu, a graduate research assistant in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics and the paper’s lead author.