Regular solar cells have a hypothetical limit of 33% for power conversion efficiency while scientists think an efficiency of 66% could be reached using perovskite solar cells
Femosecond lasers analyzing a perovskite solar cell - Image Credits; NTU Singapore
Researchers devised a procedure to analyze which combinations of materials in next-gen perovskite solar cells will generate the most amount of energy from incoming sunlight.
Traditionally, a solar cell absorbs sunlight and transforms it into an electrical charge. During this procedure, the light particles have more energy than required to create electrical charges in the solar cells. In other words, there is an excess of energy. Traditionally these charges are called 'hot charges'. Hot charges lose their surplus energy quickly as heat, leaving only 'cold charges' accessible for the generating electrical power.
Regular solar cells have a hypothetical limit of 33% for power conversion efficiency. While perovskite solar cells have, so far, been able to reach an efficiency of 25%. This is almost equal to the best performing silicon solar cells. However, researchers from the Dutch University of Groningen and NTU Singapore think that an efficiency of 66% could be reached if they would be able to extract hot charges fast enough.
Image Credit: Angie Warren via Unsplash - HDR tune by Universal-Sci
Extracting hot chargers rapidly enough to get close to that 66% might be possible with the right material to bond with perovskite. The Dutch and Singaporean scientists have found an ingenious way to asses what materials are best. They published their findings in the scientific journal Science Advances.
The main advantage of perovskite solar cells versus normal solar cells is the fact that perovskite cost less and is simple to produce. Another benefit of using perovskite is that hot charges lose their excess energy in a slower fashion. Consequently, the researchers succeeded in slowing this down event further using nano-sized perovskites, making it simpler to extract the hot charges as electricity. In their most recent tests, the scientists 'watched' the solar cells at work utilizing femtosecond pulsed lasers that can measure processes that transpire approximately 100 billion times quicker than a camera flash.
If scientists succeed in producing more efficient solar cells, it would have enormous consequences for the production of green energy. We would be able to generate more energy from solar plants without requiring more surface area. A jump from 25% energy conversion to the hypothesized max of 66% would be enormous, but even a small increase would help a lot if used worldwide. Let's keep an eye on the developments in this field in the upcoming ten years and see what happens.
Sources and further reading: Hot carrier extraction in CH3NH3PbI3 unveiled by pump-push-probe spectroscopy / NTU press release
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