Stretchy solar cells a step closer

Organic photovoltaics with new properties

15-Nov-2018 - Organic solar cells that can be painted or printed on surfaces are increasingly efficient, and now show promise for incorporation into applications like clothing that also require them to be flexible. The Rice University lab of chemical and biomolecular engineer Rafael Verduzco has developed ...

Guanidinium stabilizes perovskite solar cells at 19 percent efficiency

11-Dec-2017 - With the power-conversion efficiency of silicon solar cells plateauing around 25%, perovskites are now ideally placed to become the market's next generation of photovoltaics. In particular, organic-inorganic lead halide perovskites offer manufacturing versatility that can potentially translate ...

A little tension yields enormous solar crystals

02-Oct-2017 - In the race to replace silicon in low-cost solar cells, semiconductors known as metal halide perovskites are favored because they can be solution-processed into thin films with excellent photovoltaic efficiency. A collaboration between KAUST and Oxford University researchers has now uncovered a ...

Perovskite could lead the next generation of data storage

28-Nov-2016 - EPFL scientists have developed a new perovskite material with unique properties that can be used to build next-generation hard drives. As we generate more and more data, we need storage systems, e.g. hard drives, with higher density and efficiency. But this also requires materials whose magnetic ...

An Unexpected Finding

In the pursuit of a new class of photovoltaic materials an entirely different discovery was made

22-Aug-2016 - In the pursuit of a new class of photovoltaic materials, researchers at UC Santa Barbara happened upon an entirely different discovery that addresses a centuries-old mystery of chemistry: Why does an iodine solution turn blue-black when starch is added to the mix? The exact structural-chemical ...

Made from solar concentrate

Solar cell absorbs high-energy light at 30-fold higher concentration than conventional cells

03-Sep-2015 - By combining designer quantum dot light-emitters with spectrally matched photonic mirrors, a team of scientists with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois created solar cells that collect blue photons with the highest luminescent concentration factor ever ...

Boroles get a stability boost

10-Aug-2015 - Boroles could be a highly interesting class of materials for practical use in photovoltaic or LED applications – if it weren't for the molecules' extreme instability. Chemists from Würzburg have now discovered a powerful stabiliser. Boroles are boron containing molecules that have great ...

Scientists get to the heart of fool's gold as a solar material

20-Nov-2014 - As the installation of photovoltaic solar cells continues to accelerate, scientists are looking for inexpensive materials beyond the traditional silicon that can efficiently convert sunlight into electricity. Theoretically, iron pyrite - a cheap compound that makes a common mineral known as ...

Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) to enable novel, high efficiency silicon nanorod solar cells

03-Jan-2012 - Picosun Oy reports successful final results of the European Union 7th Framework Programme funded research project ROD-SOL. The goal of this multinational, inter-European, three years (2009-2011) project combining the efforts of both scientific and industrial partners has been to dramatically ...

Selenium makes more efficient solar cells

10-Aug-2010 - Call it the anti-sunscreen. That's more or less the description of what many solar energy researchers would like to find -- light-catching substances that could be added to photovoltaic materials in order to convert more of the sun's energy into carbon-free electricity. Research reported in the ...