Building efficient and thermally stable perovskite solar cells using Ti₃C₂TₓMXene
by University of Queensland
Credit: University of Queensland
A new generation of cheap, sustainable and efficient solar cells is a step closer, thanks to scientists at The University of Queensland.
Researchers at UQ's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) modified a nanomaterial to make solar cells as efficient as silicon-based cells, but without their high cost and complex manufacturing.
Professor Joe Shapter said the finding addressed an urgent need for alternative environmentally friendly energy sources capable of providing efficient and reliable energy production.
"Silicon-based solar cells remain the dominant first-generation product making up 90 percent of the market, but demand was high for cells that could be manufactured without their high prices and complexity," Professor Shapter said.
"Among the next-generation technologies, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have attracted enormous attention because of their high efficiency and ease of fabrication.
"The technology has undergone unprecedented rapid development in recent years.
"But the new generation of solar cells still have some drawbacks such as poor long-term stability, lead toxicity and high material costs."
Professor Shapter said his team studied a nanomaterial that showed great promise in overcoming some of the new cell's drawbacks and used doping, a common method of modifying the new cell's nanomaterial to enhance its electrical properties.
Researchers have incorporated phosphorene nanoribbons into new types of solar cells, dramatically improving their efficiency.
Phosphorene nanoribbons (PNRs) are ribbon-like strands of the 2D material phosphorous, which, similar to graphene, are made of single-atom-thick layers of atoms. PNRs were first produced in 2019, and hundreds of theoretical studies have predicted how their properties could enhance all kinds of devices, including batteries, biomedical sensors, and quantum computers.
However, none of these predicted exciting properties have so far been demonstrated in actual devices. Now, for the first time, a team led by Imperial College London and University College London researchers has used PNRs to significantly improve the efficiency of a device—a new kind of solar cell—demonstrating that the 'wonder material' may indeed live up to its hype.
The details are published today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Lead researcher Dr. Thomas Macdonald, from the Department of Chemistry and the Centre for Processable Electronics at Imperial, said: "Hundreds of theoretical studies have foreseen the exciting properties of PNRs, but no published reports have yet demonstrated these properties, or their translation into improved device performance.
A research team from the National University of Singapore has set a new record in the power conversion efficiency of solar cells (in photo) made using perovskite and organic materials. Their latest work demonstrated a power conversion efficiency of 23.6%. Credit: National University of Singapore
A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has set a new record in the power conversion efficiency of solar cells made using perovskite and organic materials. This technological breakthrough paves the way for flexible, light-weight, low cost and ultra-thin photovoltaic cells which are ideal for powering vehicles, boats, blinds and other applications.
"Technologies for clean and renewable energy are extremely important for carbon reduction. Solar cells that directly convert solar energy into electricity are among the most promising clean energy technologies. High power conversion efficiency of solar cells is critical for generating more electrical power using a limited area and this, in turn, reduces the total cost of generating solar energy," explained lead researcher Presidential Young Professor Hou Yi, who is from the NUS Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and also leading a "Perovskite-based Multi-junction Solar Cells group" at the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore at NUS.
"The main motivation of this study is to improve the power conversion efficiency of perovskite/organic tandem solar cells. In our latest work, we have demonstrated a power conversion efficiency of 23.6%—this is the best performance for this type of solar cells to date," added Dr. Chen Wei, Research Fellow at the NUS Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the first author of this work.
This achievement is significant leap from the current power conversion rate of about 20% reported by other studies on perovskite/organic tandem solar cells, and is approaching the power conversion rate of 26.7% of silicon solar cells, which is the dominating solar technology in the current solar photovoltaic (PV) market.
An international team of researchers has demonstrated a technique for producing perovskite photovoltaic materials on an industrial scale, which will reduce the cost and improve the performance of mass-produced perovskite solar cells.
The technique is low-cost, simple, energy-efficient, and should pave the way for creating perovskite solar cells. Perovskite is of interest for solar cells because it absorbs light very efficiently. This allows for the creation of lightweight, flexible solar cells that can be incorporated into a range of technologies, such as the windows of buildings or vehicles.
"In the lab, researchers produce perovskite photovoltaic materials using a technique called spin coating, which creates a thin film of perovskite on a substrate—but only on a small scale," says Aram Amassian, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and a professor of materials science and engineering at North Carolina State University.
"We're talking about sample substrates that are only one or two centimeters square. However, people didn't think it was possible to scale spin-coating up for manufacturing, using substrates that are tens of centimeters square. Instead, people have opted for a variety of other methods. But these other methods produce perovskite photovoltaics that don't perform as well as the thin films made using spin coating and required significant research and development."
Germany plugged in solar plants of 421.11 MW in December to boost the solar capacity installed across the country through 2021 to 5.26 GW, the Federal Network Agency said on Monday.
The new onshore wind capacity remained far behind solar power. Wind turbines with a combined output of 152.9 MW went online in December and raised the total wind capacity deployed in 2021 to almost 1.86 GW.
More than half of the new solar additions in December, or 261.21 MW, were plants connected to the grid outside of EEG tenders with ground-mounted sites accounting for only 8.73 MW of the total.
The deployment of new onshore wind capacity increased slightly in the last month of the year after recording a 36% month-on-month drop in November. The addition of new turbines is expected to speed up this year with the new capacity to be commissioned across the country seen in the range of 2.3 GW to 2.7 GW, shows a study conducted by consulting firm Deutsche WindGuard on the basis of data for already approved projects and past tenders. However, the expansion pace needs to be significantly accelerated in order to achieve the ambitious climate goals of the new government. The strategy of the coalition government envisages more than doubling onshore wind capacity to exceed 100 GW by 2030 with annual deployment set to reach about 10 GW in the last few years of the decade.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
Silicon solar cells have proven to be a top photovoltaic technology, as they use earth abundant raw materials (i.e. Si) and perform with high efficiency. However, they are based on thick, rigid and heavy wafers and can therefore only be installed in a limited number of places. One of the ways to overcome this disadvantage is to use thin membranes instead. This will reduce the amount of Si by more than 99% (dramatically saving in raw materials) and also make the cells flexible and lightweight. As such, these cells can be easily integrated into buildings, urban architecture and even small everyday gadgets. The problem is that such thin Si membranes cannot absorb light as efficiently. In fact, only 25% of the sunlight is absorbed and you can even see through them.
Using a new rationally-designed nanostructure texture, researchers from AMOLF, Surrey University and Imperial College have found a way to make the thin photovoltaic cells opaque and thus enhance their efficiency. In the lab, they found that such textured thin membranes absorb 65% of sunlight, which is very close to the ultimate theoretical absorption limit of ~70%. This is the highest light absorption ever demonstrated in such a thin Si membrane and it is, therefore, likely that flexible, light-weight and efficient Si photovoltaic cells will be developed in the near future.
How does it work?
The patterned nanostructure judiciously re-directs straight sunlight into a range of angles, thereby trapping light inside the Si membrane. With the light being trapped, it has more chances to be absorbed and the thickness of the membrane effectively increases for the light.
(EurekAlert) WASHINGTON, April 5, 2022 – About 750 million people in the world do not have access to electricity at night. Solar cells provide power during the day, but saving energy for later use requires substantial battery storage.
In Applied Physics Letters, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Stanford University constructed a photovoltaic cell that harvests energy from the environment during the day and night, avoiding the need for batteries altogether. The device makes use of the heat leaking from Earth back into space – energy that is on the same order of magnitude as incoming solar radiation.
At night, solar cells radiate and lose heat to the sky, reaching temperatures a few degrees below the ambient air. The device under development uses a thermoelectric module to generate voltage and current from the temperature gradient between the cell and the air. This process depends on the thermal design of the system, which includes a hot side and a cold side.
"You want the thermoelectric to have very good contact with both the cold side, which is the solar cell, and the hot side, which is the ambient environment," said author Sid Assawaworrarit. "If you don't have that, you're not going to get much power out of it."
A team of researchers from the University of Toronto's Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering has leveraged quantum mechanics to optimize the active layer within a device known as an inverted perovskite solar cell—a technology that could one day result in mass-market solar cells that a fraction of those currently on the market.
A German research team has developed a tandem solar cell that reaches 24 percent efficiency—measured according to the fraction of photons converted into electricity (i.e., electrons). This sets a new world record as the highest efficiency achieved so far with this combination of organic and perovskite-based absorbers. The solar cell was developed by Professor Dr. Thomas Riedl's group at the University of Wuppertal together with researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry at the University of Cologne and other project partners from the Universities of Potsdam and Tübingen as well as the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin and the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschng in Düsseldorf. The results have been published in Nature under the title "Perovskite–organic tandem solar cells with indium oxide interconnect."
Conventional solar cell technologies are predominantly based on the semiconductor silicon and are now considered to be "as good as it gets." Significant improvements in their efficiency—i.e., more watts of electrical power per watt of solar radiation collected—can hardly be expected. That makes it all the more necessary to develop new solar technologies that can make a decisive contribution to the energy transition. Two such alternative absorber materials have been combined in this work. Here, organic semiconductors were used, which are carbon-based compounds that can conduct electricity under certain conditions. These were paired with a perovskite, based on a lead-halogen compound, with excellent semiconducting properties. Both of these technologies require significantly less material and energy for their production compared to conventional silicon cells, making it possible to make solar cells even more sustainable.
Solar could generate half of the world’s electricity by 2050 and become the cheapest source of energy, Gao Jifan, the chief executive officer of Trina Solar Co., said at the Boao Forum for Asia.
Global solar power capacity has the potential to grow to 14,000 gigawatts by the middle of the century from 800 gigawatts at the end of last year, Gao said in a panel discussion at the annual forum in Hainan. Chinese company Trina is the world’s third-biggest supplier of solar panels.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
In this post, I am thinking of "advances" as not just in sophistication of design, but also in actual implementation through construction. Breakthroughs in technology that are not scalable or otherwise cost effective can be thus inconsequential. Construction completes the implementation process.
How Mohammed bin Rashid Solar Park Plays a Key Role in Dubai’s Net-zero Strategy May 5, 2022
(The National) Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, the largest single-site solar park in the world, will help reduce more than 6.5 million tonnes of emissions when it becomes operational, contributing to Dubai’s net-zero strategy.
The park has a planned capacity of 5,000 megawatts and is developed at a cost of Dh50 billion ($13.61bn) across five stages. It will be operational by 2030.
The park is expected to play a key role in helping Dubai procure 100 per cent of its power from clean energy sources by 2050.
The current capacity at the solar park is 1,527MW using photovoltaic solar panels, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority said.
“Dewa is implementing more projects with a total capacity of 1,333MW using solar photovoltaic and Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) in addition to future phases to reach 5,000MW by 2030,” said Saeed Al Tayer, managing director and chief executive of Dewa.
Edit: Changes in format to facilitate easier reading.
Last edited by caltrek on Mon Jun 20, 2022 5:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.
If it feels as if the solar industry has crossed a major milestone, that’s because it has. Cumulative industry deployments reached 1 TW of installed capacity sometime in Q1. And now, only a couple of months later, it is time to move on from these accomplishments and ask the industry, “what will you do for us by 2030?”
What is it we are asking for? One terawatt of solar power, installed each and every year, and forever thereafter, starting in 2030.
At InterSolar Munich last week, LONGi Solar, the global leader in solar panel manufacturing, projected that global solar deployment will reach 1 TW per year by 2030.
To elucidate this point, pv magazine USA assembled the chart below based upon BloombergNEF solar photovoltaics deployment data from the year 1980 through 2021. The vertical axis shows the amount of growth in each year versus the three years prior.
Several industry analyst groups have reported that global solar deployment in 2021 totals 150 MW of capacity versus BloombergNEF’s 183 GW. Starting with the lowest estimate, and assuming that installed capacity continues to double every three years, the capacity deployed in the near future will be immense:
2021 – 150 GW
2024 – 300 GW
2027 – 600 GW
2030 – 1.2 TW
Alternatively, if we start with the 183 GW deployment predicted by the venerable BloombergNEF team, we arrive at nearly 1.5 TW of yearly deployments in 2030.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
Lightweight as a window cling and replicable as a newspaper, organic solar cells are emerging as a viable solution for the nation's growing energy demand.
Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are the first to observe a biological property called chirality emerging in achiral conjugated polymers, which are used to design flexible solar cells. Their discovery could help enhance the cells' charge capacity and increase access to affordable renewable energy.
DNA's coiled architecture is recognizable to many as a helix. Structurally speaking, DNA and other helical molecules are classified as chiral: asymmetrical such that superimposition onto a mirror image is impossible. The term originates with the Greek word for hand, which is also an example. Picture a left handprint on a sheet of paper, followed by a right handprint directly on top. The two prints do not neatly align; your hand, like its DNA, is chiral.
From hands and feet to carbohydrates and proteins, chirality is twisted into humans' genetic makeup. It's also abundant in nature and even enhances the chemical reaction that drives photosynthesis.
"Chirality is a fascinating biological property," said Ying Diao, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and the study's principal investigator. "The function of many biomolecules is directly linked to their chirality. Take the protein complexes involved in photosynthesis. When electrons move through the proteins' spiraled structures, an effective magnetic field is generated that helps separate bound charges created by light. This means that light can be converted into biochemicals more efficiently."
For the most part, scientists have observed that molecules of like structures tend to keep to themselves: chiral molecules assemble into chiral structures (like nucleic acids forming DNA), and achiral molecules assemble into achiral structures. Diao and her colleagues observed something different. Under the right conditions, achiral conjugated polymers can depart from the norm and assemble into chiral structures.
(Nature Communications) Intimately connected to the rule of life, chirality remains a long-time fascination in biology, chemistry, physics and materials science. Chiral structures, e.g., nucleic acid and cholesteric phase developed from chiral molecules are common in nature and synthetic soft materials. While it was recently discovered that achiral but bent-core mesogens* can also form chiral helices, the assembly of chiral microstructures from achiral polymers has rarely been explored. Here, we reveal chiral emergence from achiral conjugated polymers**, in which hierarchical helical structures are developed through a multistep assembly pathway.
* A mesogen is a compound that displays liquid crystal properties. See this Wikipedia article for a further discussion of mesogens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesogen.
** Conjugated polymers are organic macromolecules that are characterized by a backbone chain of alternating double- and single-bonds
The US Army conducted a ribbon-cutting ceremony over the weekend for a new clean energy facility: the Department of Defense’s first floating solar array.
The system sits atop the surface of North Carolina’s Big Muddy Lake, where it will generate clean energy for Fort Bragg. At 1.1 megawatts, it’s the biggest floating solar array in the Southeast United States. The Army base will use the energy to power onsite facilities, supplement the local energy grid, and create a backup power source in case of power outages.
The array is the result of a collaboration between Fort Bragg, Ameresco (a renewable energy company) and Duke Energy (one of North Carolina’s power companies). The Army reports that alongside their new setup at Big Muddy Lake, the trio are testing an electronic “recloser” funded by the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program. If all goes well, the recloser will help minimize power disruptions and system damage during transient events, like contact between a tree and power line.
Samara Is Building Tech to Switch Spain’s Households Onto Solar Energy
by Natasha Lomas
June 20, 2022
Introduction:
(TechCrunch) Despite being one of the countries in Europe with the most hours of sunshine, Spain has extremely low levels of household solar installations. Madrid-based Samara, a startup founded in May this year — which is launching a service in its home market today — wants to change that, spotting what it believes is a major opportunity to accelerate the market’s transition to renewable energy.
The startup has just closed €2 million in pre-seed funding to develop technology to simplify the process for households of installing solar energy systems, batteries and EV chargers, as well as developing digital tools for householders to manage their usage. The round is led by European and LatAm VC firm, Seaya, and Pelion Green Future, an investment holding focused on clean energy and climate tech.
Samara’s approach looks similar to Berlin-based Zolar, which offers an online configurator to help householders choose a photovoltaic system to buy or rent and other digital energy products, as well as connecting them with a network of local installers to carry out the work.
“We want to really simplify adoption of solar by customers,” says Samara co-founder, Iván Cabezuela. “That means simplifying the experience using software and technology to create easier customer proposals, easier projects — like customers can see where the panels will fit at their home with 3D design, and see what their savings would be, and things like that.”
This will include building an installer management app for the third party installers Samara intends its platform to work with.
Lightweight and flexible perovskites are highly promising materials for the fabrication of photovoltaics. So far, however, their highest reported efficiencies have been around 20%, which is considerably lower than those of rigid perovskites (25.7%).
Researchers at Nanjing University, Jilin University, Shanghai Tech University, and East China Normal University have recently introduced a new strategy to develop more efficient solar cells based on flexible perovskites. This strategy, introduced in a paper published in Nature Energy, entails the use of two hole-selective molecules based on carbazole cores and phosphonic acid anchoring groups to bridge the perovskite with a low temperature-processed NiO nanocrystal film.
"We believe that lightweight flexible perovskite solar cells are promising for building integrated photovoltaics, wearable electronics, portable energy systems and aerospace applications," Hairen Tan, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. "However, their highest certified efficiency of 19.9% lags behind their rigid counterparts (highest 25.7%), mainly due to defective interfaces at charge-selective contacts with perovskites atop."
