Solar cell Archives - InnovationAfrica

Scalable silicon-based optical fibre has solar-cell capabilities

High-pressure chemistry techniques have been used to make a fibre out of crystalline silicon semiconductor materials that can function as a solar cell. Go...

Stanford scientists build the first all-carbon solar cell

Stanford University scientists have built the first solar cell made entirely of carbon, a promising alternative to the expensive materials used in photovoltaic devices today. The results are published in the Oct. 31 online edition of the journal ACS Nano. ...

Solar cells made from black silicon

The Sun blazes down from a deep blue sky – and rooftop solar cells convert this solar energy into electricity. Not all of it, however: Around a quarter of the Sun’s spectrum is made up of infrared radiation which cannot be converted by standard solar cells – so this heat radiation is lost. One way to overcome this is to use black silicon, a material that absorbs...

Scientists demonstrate high-efficiency quantum dot solar cells

Research shows newly developed solar powered cells may soon outperform conventional photovoltaic technology. Scientists from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have demonstrated the first solar cell with external quantum efficiency (EQE) exceeding 100 percent for photons with energies in the solar range. (The EQE is the percentage of photons that get converted...

Solar Energy Conversion – Improvement Now A Reality

According to a recent research headed by chemist Xiaoyang Zhu (University of Texas at Austin), the productivity of conventional cells (solar cells) can considerably be increased. ...

Breakthrough by U of T-led research team leads to record efficiency for next-generation solar cells

(University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering) Researchers from the University of Toronto (U of T) and King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) have made a breakthrough in the development of colloidal quantum dot (CQD) films, leading to the most efficient CQD solar cell ever. Their work is featured in a letter published in Nature...

Solar power from plastic foils

(Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) KIT intensifies printable organic solar cell research. A group of researchers headed by Dr. Alexander Colsmann at the Light Technology Institute will start work this month. The project is scheduled for a duration of four years and aims at enhancing the efficiency of organic solar cells to more than 10 percent. For this...