Does the Solar solution to the energy problem exist? Pirovskite crystal films, efficient and inexpensive
The production of energy from photovoltaics has so far been based on a standard of heavy, bulky silicon cells with an efficiency that hardly exceeds 30% of solar energy. However, the cost is high, they are heavy, bulky. If I told you that there are low-cost cells, thin as films, and with a not very different performance, to the point that they can be easily adapted to any surface.
These arePerovskite crystal films, an idea that has existed for years but has only recently seen some truly significant progress.
Metal-organic ferrocenes could make perovskite solar cells more stable. This advance is the result of a joint venture between Imperial and the City University of Hong Kong (CityU),
The solar cell has a structure that has been manufactured with a substrate of glass and tin oxide supplemented with fluorine (FTO) coated with a solution based on poly (triaryl) amine (PTAA), which is an excellent electron blocking material , a perovskite layer, a ferrocene layer, a batocuproin (BCP) buffer layer and a silver (Ag) based top electrode. All this allows to create a thin, low cost, and highly reactive film to solar photons.
Ferrocenes are composed with iron in the center, surrounded by carbon rings. They are organometallic compounds, that is composed of organic layers and a metal atom, in this case iron. The Imperial College has managed to create specially designed ferrocenes suitable for the creation of perovskite cells. They are electron-rich materials, improving electron mobility between the energy-collecting perovskite layer and subsequent layers, increasing conversion efficiency.
These cells ran for 1500 hours with 98% efficiency and were found to be very resistant to both heat and humidity. Stabilized and inexpensive, they also achieved efficiency comparable to the standard one for silicon photovoltaic cells, i.e. 25%. But with potentially much lower costs.
Technology is advancing and could soon make it possible to partially overcome dependence on fossil fuels. The problem is not to be in too much of a hurry and wait for effective solutions to arrive.
Thanks to our Telegram channel you can stay updated on the publication of new articles of Economic Scenarios.
The article Does the Solar solution to the energy problem exist? The efficient and inexpensive Pirovskite crystal films comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-soluzione-solare-al-problema-energetico-esiste-i-film-ai-cristalli-di-pirovskite-efficienti-e-poco-costosi/ on Sun, 24 Apr 2022 06:00:44 +0000.