Nano “Popcorn” Improving the efficiency of the solar pigments in a 250%
A team of academics based at the University of Washington has announced an exciting breakthrough in technology for dye sensitized solar cell.
Researchers who study the configurations of the solar cells discovered that using a design based on popcorn (small areas grouped into larger porous spheres), the economic efficiency of solar cells was more than double.
The advances were detailed in a report and presented at a national meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans. According to lead author Guozhong Cao, a professor at Washington University in science and engineering, “we believe that this can be a major breakthrough in solar cells sensitized by dyes.
Each gram of new material contains 1000 square feet of light-absorbing pigment. The complex design also means that the light is trapped inside the material, inducing a remarkable increase in absorption. So far, only have done this with zinc oxide pigments, which are much less effective than the titanium oxide pigment. The next step of the process is to see if they can reproduce the technical tints with high efficiency, and get that 250% increase in efficiency.
The solar cells have been sensitized by dyes from turning 90 and have now reached 11% of efficiency. But if this new technique works with the titanium oxide pigment as it does with the least effective of zinc oxide, but can see that 25% efficiency. That would make these cells are significantly more effective than current thin film cells, such as those produced by Nanosolar. Although the pigment cells have many of the same advantages as thin film solar, being lightweight, flexible, and can print, so far the films they have gained in price per watt.
Related posts:
- Asphalt as a solar collector The asphalt is a better solar collector than the same...
- How does solar energy works From the moment that the earth was formed, it is...
Subscribe FREE
    |
Tags: nanosolar, science, solar pigments