recent study<\/a>, the UNSW team \u2013 known as \u2018Omega Silicon\u2019 \u2013 showed how this works on an organic material that could one day be mass-produced specifically for use with solar panels.<\/p>\n\u201cA lot of the energy from light in a solar cell is wasted as heat \u2013 which itself is also a form of energy,\u201d says Dr Ben Carwithen, a postdoctoral researcher at UNSW\u2019s School of Chemistry.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re finding ways to take that wasted energy and turn it into more electricity instead.\u201d<\/p>\n
When one\u2026 equals two<\/p>\n
Most of today\u2019s solar panels are made from silicon \u2013 a reliable and cheap technology. However, there are limits to silicon\u2019s efficiency, with the best commercial cells currently converting about 27% of sunlight into electricity. The theoretical ceiling is about 29.4%.<\/p>\n
Singlet fission offers a way past that barrier. When sunlight hits certain organic materials, one high-energy photon can produce two lower-energy excitations. So, two packets of usable energy are produced, instead of just one.<\/p>\n
\u201cIntroducing singlet fission into a silicon solar panel will increase its efficiency,\u201d says Professor Ned Ekins-Daukes, project lead and head of UNSW\u2019s School of Photovoltaic & Renewable Energy Engineering.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt enables a molecular layer to supply additional current to the panel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Until now, the challenge was finding the right material. Earlier work by other teams had used a compound called tetracene, which performed well in the lab but then degraded too quickly in air and moisture to be practical.<\/p>\n
The UNSW team has now demonstrated that a compound called DPND, or dipyrrolonaphthyridinedione, can do the same job while remaining stable under real-world outdoor conditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve shown that you can interface silicon with this stable material, which undergoes singlet fission, and then injects extra electrical charge,\u201d Dr Carwithen says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s still an early step, but it\u2019s the first demonstration that this can actually work in a realistic system.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UNSW researchers are working towards a new generation of solar technology that could make sunlight work smarter \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64,63,69596,5443,1325,129868,337,150240,128,88733,69597,148823,150241,2261],"class_list":["post-254215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-division-of-equity-diversity-inclusion","tag-engineering","tag-general","tag-networks-and-partnerships","tag-research","tag-school-of-photovoltaic-and-renewable-energy-engineering","tag-science","tag-science-tech","tag-sdg","tag-sdg13","tag-sdg7","tag-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}