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Category: solar power

Dust-resilient perovskite solar cells could cut manufacturing costs and expand green energy worldwide

Research appearing in Communications Materials has shown that perovskite solar cells (PSCs) are remarkably resilient to dust during production, challenging the industry belief that high-performance solar technology must be manufactured in sterile and expensive cleanrooms. This discovery could reduce the need for ultra-clean factories, making solar cell production cheaper and more accessible worldwide.

PSCs are a new type of technology that uses a unique crystal structure to harvest light. They are thinner, lighter, and potentially much cheaper to produce than the traditional silicon panels found on roofs today. However, traditional silicon cells are incredibly fragile during the making process; even a single microscopic dust particle can ruin a cell. This forces manufacturers to use expensive, energy-hungry cleanrooms, creating a massive barrier to production in developing nations.

Researchers at Swansea University’s Faculty of Science & Engineering have now found that perovskite technology has a unique tolerance to common dust and debris.

New bifacial solar cells yield efficiencies above 32%

Solar cells, devices that can convert sunlight into electricity, are now widely used in many countries worldwide. Over the past few years, energy engineers have been exploring alternative designs that could further boost these devices’ power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) and ensure that they continue operating reliably over time.

Researchers at Soochow University, Zhejiang Jinko Solar Co. Ltd. and other institutes introduced a new bifacial solar cell design that could overcome some of the limitations of a recently introduced type of solar cell that leverage components known as tunnel oxide passivating contacts (TOPCon). Their design, outlined in a paper published in Nature Energy, combines TOPCon structures with perovskites, a class of materials with a unique crystal structure that efficiently absorbs light.

“Our work is rooted in a fundamental limitation of current TOPCon solar cells,” Kun Gao and Prof. Xinbo Yang, first author and co-senior author of the paper, respectively, told Tech Xplore. “In industrial TOPCon devices, a boron-diffused p+ emitter is still used on the front side, which introduces significant recombination losses and limits further efficiency improvements. A natural strategy is to replace this emitter with localized TOPCon contact.”

Wind-powered robot could enable long-term exploration of hostile environments

Researchers at Cranfield University have created WANDER-bot, a low-cost, 3D-printed robot that is powered by wind energy. Designed to spend long durations in hostile, windy environments such as certain deserts, polar regions or even other planets, WANDER-bot doesn’t need a battery to power movement, enabling longer operations without having to pause and recharge.

Movement accounts for around 20% of battery use in most robots, so running on natural energy makes WANDER-bot an efficient solution for long-term exploration or mapping of unknown terrains. As a result, any electronic elements added to future versions for data collection or transmission purposes could have their own smaller, lighter power source. Using natural energy also counters the issue of performance degradation over time in traditional power sources, such as solar cells and radioisotope thermoelectric generators.

Designed by Dr. Saurabh Upadhyay and Sam Kurian, Research Associate in Space Engineering, the robot uses parts that are entirely 3D printed, with the design deliberately simple to allow for quick repair and replacement. This means that, in theory, you could print and construct WANDER-bot anywhere and make replacement parts in situ as needed, removing the need for time-consuming and costly resupply missions.

Space-grade perovskite solar cells can survive extreme temperature fluctuations

The Aydin Group at LMU Munich has unveiled a novel strategy for making perovskite solar cells more robust against extreme temperature fluctuations. To this end, the researchers led by Dr. Erkan Aydin, group leader at LMU’s Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy, combined two molecular approaches. Their goal was to stabilize both the grain structure within the perovskite material and the interfaces of the solar cells, with a particular focus on enhancing the interaction between the perovskite layer and the underlying substrate. This enables the solar cells to maintain stable performance under the extreme thermal cycling typical of Low Earth orbit (LEO), as well as in other harsh environmental conditions. Their results have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Regarding the background: Perovskite solar cells are considered one of the most promising next-generation photovoltaic technologies. They are relatively inexpensive to manufacture and achieve high efficiencies.

However, their mechanical stability is an issue. In particular, when confronted with strong temperature fluctuations in LEO—for example, in the range between −80 and +80 degrees Celsius—materials inside the solar cell can expand and contract to varying extents. This creates mechanical stresses, which lead to cracks, delamination, or drops in performance.

China succeeds in mimicking photosynthesis and transforming CO₂ and water into fuel: the experiment that could revolutionize the production of synthetic gasoline

Could future gasoline come from thin air and sunlight instead of oil wells? A team of Chinese scientists has unveiled a lab system that imitates plant photosynthesis to turn carbon dioxide and water into gasoline building blocks using only sunlight. Their work hints at a way to recycle a major greenhouse gas while still using existing engines and fuel infrastructure.

In an artificial photosynthesis study, the researchers report a “charge reservoir” material that stores solar energy as electrical charge, then delivers it on demand to drive reactions. The system converts carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide, a key building block for synthetic fuels, and uses water as its only electron source instead of extra helper chemicals.

Although still a lab device, the setup works under natural sunlight and is meant to connect renewable energy to industry and transport.

Electron microscopy maps protein landscapes that drive photosynthesis

Research led by scientists at Washington State University has revealed insights on how plants form a microscopic landscape of proteins crucial to photosynthesis, the basis of Earth’s food and energy chain. The discovery provides a new view of the molecular engine that converts sunlight into bioenergy and could enable future fine-tuning of crops for higher yields and other useful traits.

Colleagues at WSU, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel used a novel, technology-powered approach to peer inside plant leaf cells and visualize the landscape of the photosynthetic membrane—the ribbon-like structure where plants harvest sunlight. The findings were recently published in the journal Science Advances.

“These membranes are highly efficient biological solar cells,” said the study’s principal investigator and corresponding author, Helmut Kirchhoff. “They convert sunlight energy into chemical energy that fuels not only the plant’s metabolism but that of most life on Earth.”

Molecular ‘catapult’ fires electrons at the limits of physics

Electrons can be “kicked across” solar materials at almost the fastest speed nature allows, scientists have discovered, challenging long-held theories about how solar energy systems work. The finding could help researchers design more efficient ways of harvesting sunlight and converting it into electricity. The research is published in Nature Communications.

In experiments capturing events lasting just 18 femtoseconds —less than 20 quadrillionths of a second—researchers at the University of Cambridge observed charge separation happening within a single molecular vibration.

“We deliberately designed a system that—according to conventional theory—should not have transferred charge this fast,” said Dr. Pratyush Ghosh, Research Fellow, at St John’s College, Cambridge, and first author of the study. “By conventional design rules, this system should have been slow, and that’s what makes the result so striking.

From water splitting to H₂O₂: A new method narrows carbon nitride photocatalyst design

Photocatalysis promises an efficient conversion of abundant solar energy into usable chemical energy. Polyheptazine imides have some key structural and functional twists that make them especially interesting for photocatalysis. So far, there is only limited knowledge about how structural changes affect the electronic and optical properties of the many material candidates in this class. A team led by researchers from the Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS) at HZDR has now presented a reliable and reproducible theoretical method to solve this challenge that was confirmed by measurements done on genuine candidate materials.

Polyheptazine imides belong to the family of carbon nitrides, which are layered, graphene-like compounds composed of nitrogen-rich, ring-shaped units. Unlike graphene, which exhibits excellent electrical conductivity but lacks photocatalytic activity, polyheptazine imides possess band gaps suitable for visible-light absorption.

Carbon nitride-based materials impress due to their low production cost, nontoxicity and thermal stability. However, the first generation of such materials were not ideal photocatalysts as the materials possessed properties that hindered charge separation. If a material has a low charge separation, the electron excited by an incoming photon quickly recombines with the hole it was propelled from—and releases energy only as heat or light. No energy is available to drive chemical reactions.

‘Solar battery’ stores sunlight for days, then releases hydrogen on demand

A new material can store energy from sunlight and convert it into hydrogen days later. The material, jointly developed by researchers from Ulm and Jena, can do this even in the dark. The process is reversible and can be reactivated several times using a pH switch. The results are published in the journal Nature Communications.

Green hydrogen is one of the most important pillars of the energy transition. It is produced from sunlight using photocatalytic processes. There are now a variety of technologies for converting and storing solar energy into chemical energy. But now, for the first time, a material that can store the energy from sunlight for several days and then release it in the form of hydrogen “at the push of a button” has been successfully developed.

“You can think of it as a combination of a solar cell and a battery at the molecular level,” explains Professor Sven Rau, who heads the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry I at Ulm University.

A new, useful absorption limit for ultra-thin films

The applications of ultrathin, conductive films such as those made of graphene have many applications, but it’s been thought their efficacy is limited to absorbing only half of the incidental light at best. A research group in China has now shown that absorption can be as high as 82.8% at light grazing angles nearly parallel to the film. This could not only significantly improve design efficiencies but sheds light on light-matter interactions at sizes much lower than the light’s wavelength. Their work has been published in Physical Review Letters.

Graphene ultrathin films, as thin as one carbon atom (about 0.34 nanometers, 300,000 times thinner than a sheet of paper) have many applications: flexible and transparent electronics, energy storage and batteries, solar cells and photovoltaics, sensors and high-speed electronics and more, where they absorb light.

While such films allow for miniaturizing devices and reducing their weight, their extreme thinness has led to the characterization that they are limited to absorbing only half of the incoming light.

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