Silicon-based solar cells have a theoretical efficiency limit of around 30 per cent, but adding a perovskite layer enables new designs to harvest more energy
Marc Venema / Alamy Stock Photo
A new kind of solar cell has broken a theoretical limit on the efficiency of silicon-based cells, which could enable us to harvest more energy from sunlight. Almost all commercial solar cells are made from silicon. These can only convert a narrow frequency band of sunlight to electricity. Light that is too far outside this range either passes straight through or is lost as heat, which gives silicon cells a theoretical efficiency limit of around 29.4 per cent.
This limit could, in theory, be higher if another material that generates electricity from light in a different frequency range is stacked on top of the silicon layer. Perovskite, acrystal, is well suited to this because it is better at absorbing light closer to the infrared spectrum, but making it efficient has proven difficult. This is because of wayward electrons that are reabsorbed into the crystal before they can be turned into current.
This process causes fewer defects in the silicon-perovskite interface, says Chin, and so increases the number of electrons available for current. The team’s device has an efficiency of 31.2 per cent.at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin and her colleagues injected liquid piperazinium iodide into the perovskite layer, which also appeared to reduce the wayward electrons – achieving an efficiency of 32.5 per cent.Get a dose of climate optimism delivered straight to your inbox every month.
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