Solar Cells Achieve New Maximum Efficiency
- May 19, 2008 4:46 PM EST
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Just recently, solar cell efficiency was propelled from a decent 21.9 percent to an astounding 23.2 percent! Bravo, er, right? OK, so figure-wise the improvement is not THAT big, but even that tiny of an increase in performance could mean a whole new level for the solar energy industry. Solar panel manufacturers could increase the output of their products greatly, and more people would be interested into taking a foray in the world of alternative energy. How did the improvement happen anyways?
At the Eindhoven University of Technology, a physicist named Bram Hoex and his colleagues collaborated with Germany's Fraunhofer Institute and developed a new type of solar cell. We don't mean something radical like solar cells made of fruit dyes. The researchers made use of a traditional crystalline silicon solar cell and coated it with an uber-thin film of aluminum oxide. This film provides the solar cell with an impressively high number of negative charges which minimizes the loss of energy on the surface. What makes the method highly-viable though, is that coating solar cells with aluminum oxide is expected to have a very low impact on the cost of production. Hence, Hoex predicts an increase in solar cell production by five million per year.