The Layered Look in 1000x Solar Cells

Dean Sigler Announcements, Solar Power, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

We hear a lot about 10X batteries, but 1000X solar cells?  Layering up may be stylish and even practical in the fashion world, and in solar cells may be a chance to unite otherwise dissimilar materials with otherwise limited light-to-electric conversion capabilities.   That strategy produced solar cells with 1000x that.  That’s what researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) found when they created crystalline layers of layers of barium titanate (a mixed oxide of barium and titanium), strontium titanate and calcium titanate which they alternately placed on top of one another. Researchers found high increases in responses from the layered oxides because of higher permittivity – electrons able to flow more freely. The team’s paper, “Strongly enhanced and tunable photovoltaic effect in ferroelectric-paraelectric superlattices,” appears in the June 2 issue of the journal Science Advances. A Titanate Sandwich Barium titanate (BaTiO3 or BTO) is a “common ferroelectric material” used to manufacture electronic components such as capacitors.  It is, “a popular …

More Powerful, Longer Lasting Perovskites

Dean Sigler Electric Aircraft Materials, Solar Power, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Perovskites, calcium titanium oxide minerals composed of calcium titanate, with the chemical formula CaTiO, are found in relative abundance throughout the world and have  characteristics that make them a plausible candidate for use in solar cells. Initially showing good efficiency at small scales, perovskite solar cells were potentially less expensive to produce than conventional silicon-based units, and could be more efficient, especially as single-layer silicon cells reach their theoretical limit of 30-percent efficiency.  Perovskite cells could be configured to respond to different wavelengths of light, stacked on one another, and still be thinner than conventional solar cells. Part of the attraction of perovskites cells has been their rapid increase in efficiency, nearly equaling the best silicon cells in about six years, as opposed to the 35 years needed for silicon cells to increase from 16 percent efficiency to a little over 25. Some factors get in the way, one being that perovskites react badly with moisture.  Thus, their life spans are much shorter than the more …