Tiny Shells Yield “Remarkable” Increase In Organic Solar Cell Conversion Efficiency
Tiny shells embedded in the surface of an organic solar cell are among the new developments pushing down the cost of solar energy.
Tiny shells embedded in the surface of an organic solar cell are among the new developments pushing down the cost of solar energy.
Originally published on Solar Love. Cost-efficient plastic solar cells are now one step closer to the market thanks to new research from Imperial College London — a new means of exerting control over the arrangement of polymer molecules within a thin layer of a plastic solar cell has been developed, … [continued]
With the world’s population is growing so quickly, how will we all be supplied with electricity sustainably? Reserves of all the major fossil fuels are dwindling more and more rapidly due to demand increases. As these supplies diminish, they become impractically expensive for more and more people. Plus, there is … [continued]
The price of solar panels has been sinking like a stone for the past few years, and that could be just the beginning of a low cost solar power future. When that happens, it will be partly due to the development of solar cells made of organic materials, which are … [continued]
This article was originally published on the Yale News website. For some solar cells, the future may be fluorescent. Scientists at Yale have improved the ability of a promising type of solar cell to absorb light and convert it into electrical power by adding a fluorescent organic dye to the … [continued]
A new polymer solar cells designed by researchers at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology has achieved a record for the highest efficiency of any plasmonic PSCs that utilize metal nanoparticles. The new record is not far off of the 10% conversion efficiency level that the researchers think … [continued]
A new and somewhat unexpected way to create very high-efficiency organic solar cells has been found. Rather than working solely to increase the purity of a solar cell’s two domains — acceptor and donor — researchers found that if impure domains are made smaller, this also increases efficiency levels. … [continued]
By controlling how the ‘mixing’ occurs between acceptor and donor layers (solar cell domains) in polymer-based solar cells, efficiency could be greatly boosted, says new research from a team that includes physicists from North Carolina State University. This new research has given some insight into the most inner workings … [continued]
A team of scientists headed up by Princeton University has achieved a whopping 47 percent increase in electricity generation from flexible plastic solar cells, simply by texturing the surface to mimic the wrinkles of a typical leaf. The biomimicry approach has resulted in a low cost, elegant solution for polymer-based … [continued]
“Scientists boosted the significance of tandem polymer solar cells by successfully testing cells with low-bandgap polymers that achieved certified conversion efficiencies of 8.62 ± 0.3% with respect to standard terrestrial reporting conditions,” the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) announced today. “Further, after the researchers incorporated a new infrared-absorbing polymer … [continued]