100% solar cell?

Using supercomputers, researchers at Ohio State University have accidentally stumbled upon a new solar cell material that is capable of absorbing all the sun’s visible light energy, translating it into a potential of almost 100% efficiency.

This solar cell material not only fluoresces, it also phosphoresces. Electrons in a phosphorescent state remain at a place where the energy can be siphoned off as electricity over seven million times longer than those generated in a fluorescent state. With the technology utilizing fluoresces comes the problem of solar energy retention in geographic locations where long-term overcast is an issue. During the winter, between the pole and the polar circle, there is a period that there is no intervening day between consecutive nights, making fluoresces technology useless.

Without getting too technical or confusing, the basic structure of this new discovery utilizes a material comprised of a hybrid of plastics, molybdenum, and titanium that can be captured and stored for future use.

Currently, traditional solar cell materials use fluorescence to gather electricity in what’s termed a “single state.” Excited electrons last only a dozen or so picoseconds, or a trillionth of a second. With the new discovery, the material that was created causes not only fluorescing electrons in the singlet state to be created, but also phosphorescing electrons in what’s called a triplet state that remain excited much longer. With this longer lasting state of free electron flow, their ability to be captured is significantly greater than current technologies.

Current solar technology has an efficiency rate of 7% to 60% at the furthest extreme of the technology, at which level they are too fragile and impractical to mass produce. The silicon cells commonly used in today’s panels have efficiencies in the 20% range. So, in the light of this new discovery, achieving close to 100% efficiency is quite a breakthrough.

The newly discovered solar cell material is in the infant stage and undergoing preliminary tests. But I am sure that since, as in this case, the new solar cell was accidentally discovered via supercomputers, those same supercomputers will most likely accelerate the process and give the world a much more efficient solar alternative.

A complete study of the team’s work appears in the current issue of “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” (PNAS).

Source: http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39807/113/

Posted on December 9th in Solar News by Beth.