Record-breaking transparent solar panels pave way for electricity-generating windows
Scientists have achieved a new efficiency record for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs), opening up new commercial possibilities for transparent solar panels.
A team from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland made the breakthrough using specially designed photosensitizer dye molecules that when combined are capable of harvesting light from across the entire visible light spectrum.
The transparent properties of DSCs make them suitable for use in windows, greenhouses and glass facades, the researchers said, as well as in the screens of portable electronic devices.
They are also flexible, relatively low-cost and can be made using conventional roll-printing techniques. Theoretically, the price/performance ratio is also good enough to allow them to compete with fossil fuel electrical generation.
The first commercial applications are already being realised, with dye-sensitized solar windows installed in the SwissTech Convention Center, however their capacity for generating electricity has so far been restricted by their lack of efficiency compared to traditional solar cells.
The latest development pushes the power conversion efficiency to between 28.4-30.2 per cent, while still maintaining long-term operational stability over 500 hours of testing.
“Our findings pave the way for facile access to high performance DSCs and offer promising prospects for applications as power supply and battery replacement for low-power electronic devices that use ambient light as their energy source,” wrote the authors of a study detailing the technology.
The study, titled ‘Hydroxamic acid preadsorption raises efficiency of cosensitized solar cells’, was published in the scientific journal Nature on Wednesday.
