Silicon probably won’t be replaced as the dominant solar material anytime soon, but it might not be too long before it gets a partner from a promising class of materials called perovskites.
A group led by Henry Snaith, a physicist at the University of Oxford and leading perovskite researcher, has demonstrated what it says is a viable pathway to a device that combines a conventional silicon cell with a perovskite cell to boost the efficiency of that silicon cell by several percentage points.
Perovskites, which have captured the interest of solar researchers and energy policy experts because of their rapidly improving performance and low cost, are distinguished by a chemical structure that gives rise to unique electronic properties that make them attractive for solar technology (see “Could a New Solar Material Outperform Silicon?”). Snaith and his colleagues say the new composition they’ve developed overcomes a fundamental obstacle to designing a highly efficient device that combines the light-absorbing characteristics of silicon with those of a perovskite material.
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