Not bad but 4% compares to 12% and a long promised 20% in
established solar cellswell enough to feel some confidence that
market can be found.
Work has been underway on this concept for a long time and not
surprisingly as anyone can spot the need and opportunity.
Solar energy is even getting cheap enough to be economically
justifiable. Now the effort to make it really convenient and
inevitable begins. It has been a long haul with improvements
measured in microns rather than steps.
I have been following serious efforts in the industry beginning in
the late seventies and have only seen one winning strategy at all.
That is to simply make it cheaper. Even then secondary costs will
bite. Thus it has been an economically difficult industry for all
this time because the value case for the end user is not that
compelling.
How your windows
could be the future of electricity: Scientists create transparent
solar panels out of 'glass-like' plastic
By EDDIE WRENN
PUBLISHED: 15:46
GMT, 23 July 2012 | UPDATED: 08:31 GMT, 24 July 2012
One of the occasional
complaints around solar panels is that they are 'an eyesore'.
Well this may be about
to change, after researchers developed a new transparent solar cell
which means windows in homes and other buildings can have the ability
to generate electricity while still allowing people to see outside.
The University of
California, Los Angeles team describes a new kind of polymer solar
cell (PSC) that produces energy by absorbing mainly infrared light,
making the cells nearly 70 per cent transparent to the human eye.
They made the device
from a photo-active plastic that converts infrared light into an
electrical current.
Power you can see
through: The UCLA team have made solar panels that are almost
transparent
'These results open
the potential for visibly transparent polymer solar cells as add-on
components of portable electronics, smart windows and
building-integrated photovoltaics and in other applications,' said
study leader Yang Yang, a UCLA professor of materials science and
engineering.
Yang added that there
has been intense world-wide interest in so-called polymer solar
cells.
'Our new PSCs are made
from plastic-like materials and are lightweight and flexible,' he
said. 'More importantly, they can be produced in high volume at low
cost.'
Polymer solar cells have attracted great attention due to their advantages over competing solar cell technologies.
Scientists have also
been intensely investigating PSCs for their potential in making
unique advances for broader applications. Several such applications
would be enabled by high-performance visibly transparent photovoltaic
(PV) devices, including building-integrated photovoltaics and
integrated PV chargers for portable electronics.
Previously, many
attempts have been made toward demonstrating visibly transparent or
semitransparent PSCs.
However, these
demonstrations often result in low visible light transparency and/or
low device efficiency because suitable polymeric PV materials and
efficient transparent conductors were not well deployed in device
design and fabrication.
A team of UCLA researchers from the California NanoSystems Institute, the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and UCLA's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry have demonstrated high-performance, solution-processed, visibly transparent polymer solar cells through the incorporation of near-infrared light-sensitive polymer and using silver nanowire composite films as the top transparent electrode.
The near-infrared
photoactive polymer absorbs more near-infrared light but is less
sensitive to visible light, balancing solar cell performance and
transparency in the visible wavelength region.
Another breakthrough is the transparent conductor made of a mixture of silver nanowire and titanium dioxide nanoparticles, which was able to replace the opaque metal electrode used in the past. This composite electrode also allows the solar cells to be fabricated economically by solution processing.
With this combination,
4 per cent power-conversion efficiency for solution-processed and
visibly transparent polymer solar cells has been achieved.
'We are excited by
this new invention on transparent solar cells, which applied our
recent advances in transparent conducting windows (also published in
ACS Nano) to fabricate these devices,' said Paul S.Weiss, CNSI
director and Fred Kavli Chair in NanoSystems Sciences.
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