World’s most efficient solar panel created by scientists

By Gwyn Wright via SWNS

The world’s most efficient solar panel has been created by scientists.

The new device reaches 24 percent efficiency, the most powerful achieved so far when organic and perovskite-based absorbers are added together.

Existing solar technologies are made using silicon and cannot be improved much further, which means more efficient solar panels that can help the world transition to clean energy are urgently needed.

The new panel uses organic carbon-based semiconductors, which can conduct electricity under certain conditions, alongside a lead and halogen-based perovskite compound.

Both these materials use less energy than normal silicon cells, which means they are more sustainable.

As sunlight contains different colors, efficient solar panels have to convert as much of this as possible into electricity.

This can be achieved with so-called tandem cells, in which different semiconductor materials are combined in the solar panel, which each absorbs different types of sunlight.

For the current study, organic semiconductors were used for ultraviolet and visible parts of the light while the perovskite absorbed the infrared light.

Similar combinations of materials have been used in the past but a German-based research team has managed to significantly boost their performance.

When the study began, the world’s best organic tandem cells had an efficiency of around 20 percent but simulations by the researchers estimated the eco-friendly electricity generators could have an efficiency of 30 percent in the future.

Study co-author Dr. Selina Olthof said: “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.”

The findings were published in the journal Nature.