When you think of “solar power,” vast acres of black panels powered by silicon semiconductor solar cells likely come to mind. While these panels, which have helped reduce the global price of solar energy by nearly 90 percent since 2010, deliver much-needed renewable energy, building large swaths of solar farms and affixing panels to our roofs isn’t the only answer.
According to an upcoming study, scientists from Oxford University have created a new kind of a light-absorbing material that isn’t reliant on the impressive-yet-inflexible silicon-based photovoltaics that power solar farms of today. Instead, this technology uses a “multi-junction approach” that stacks multiple light-absorbing layers, called perovskites, into a single solar cell.
Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), which is well-known for its photovoltaic calibration, standards and measurements team, independently tested that this new solar cell achieved 27 percent efficiency, meaning the tech converted 27 percent of the sun’s light into usable energy. That’s pretty impressive because only under ideal laboratory conditions can silicon photovoltaics reach a similar level of efficiency, and according to the researchers, this is only the beginning.
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