While today’s commercial solar panels typically have an efficiency of at most 25 percent, a silicon solar cell harnessing singlet fission should make it feasible to achieve efficiency of more than 30 percent, Baldo says — a huge leap in a field typically marked by slow, incremental progress. In solar cell research, he notes, people are striving “for an increase of a tenth of a percent.”
Solar panel efficiencies can also be improved by stacking different solar cells together, but combining solar cells is expensive with conventional solar-cell materials. The new technology instead promises to work as an inexpensive coating on solar cells.
The proof of principle in April, 2013, the team had not yet optimized the energy-conversion efficiency of the system, which remains less than 2 percent. But ratcheting up that efficiency through further optimization should be a straightforward process, the researchers say.
This is a follow up to coverage of research that Pentacene coating was used to boost quantum solar-to-electric conversion efficiency to over 100%
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Solar panel efficiencies can also be improved by stacking different solar cells together, but combining solar cells is expensive with conventional solar-cell materials. The new technology instead promises to work as an inexpensive coating on solar cells.
The proof of principle in April, 2013, the team had not yet optimized the energy-conversion efficiency of the system, which remains less than 2 percent. But ratcheting up that efficiency through further optimization should be a straightforward process, the researchers say.
This is a follow up to coverage of research that Pentacene coating was used to boost quantum solar-to-electric conversion efficiency to over 100%
Read more »
