It’s now possible to use solar energy directly to produce some of the most important materials used in solar energy technologies, thanks to a new “breakthrough” from researchers at Oregon State University.
The advance means that the costs of some types of solar energy technology could be notably reduced within the near-future, according to the researchers.
“This approach should work and is very environmentally conscious,” stated Chih-Hung Chang, a professor of chemical engineering at Oregon State University, and lead author on the new study.
“Several aspects of this system should continue to reduce the cost of solar energy, and when widely used, our carbon footprint,” Chang continued. “It could produce solar energy materials anywhere there’s an adequate solar resource, and in this chemical manufacturing process, there would be zero energy impact.”
Oregon State University provides more:
The work is based on the use of a “continuous flow” microreactor to produce nanoparticle inks that make solar cells by printing. Existing approaches based mostly on batch operations are more time-consuming and costly.
In this process, simulated sunlight is focused on the solar microreactor to rapidly heat it, while allowing precise control of temperature to aid the quality of the finished product. The light in these experiments was produced artificially, but the process could be done with direct sunlight, and at a fraction of the cost of current approaches.
“Our system can synthesize solar energy materials in minutes compared to other processes that might take 30 minutes to two hours,” Chang noted. “This gain in operation speed can lower cost.”
In the recent work, the solar materials used were created with copper indium diselenide, but in the future it’s likely that lower cost materials could be easily substituted — perhaps something like copper zinc tin sulfide?
The researchers also note the fact that systems involving molten salts could likely be easily rigged-up to allow for a full 24-hours of production.
The new findings were detailed in a paper just published in the journal RSC Advances, a journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Image Credit: Oregon State University
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