MOSCOW, April 4Physicists from St. Petersburg's ITMO and Alferov University, together with Italian colleagues, have developed so-called perovskite solar cells that increase the efficiency of solar panels, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education said.
According to experts, perovskite panels can replace conventional silicon. They are quite simple to manufacture and are able to generate the same amount of electricity from the same area.
At the same time, the maximum efficiency that has been achieved to date is about 25 percent. To improve efficiency, most often, additional substances, such as nanomaterials, are included in the composition of perovskite films.
Russian specialists and their foreign colleagues conducted experiments with a relatively new and promising class of A3B5 compounds — semiconductor materials. These are whisker-like nanocrystals resembling nanoneedles in structure. Among other conductors, they stand out for their suitable electrophysical properties: they perfectly absorb light, are characterized by low optical losses and optimal thermal conductivity, and are involved in the transfer of charges.
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For perovskite solar cells, such substances were used for the first time. Thanks to them, scientists were able to increase the efficiency of converting light into electricity from 17 to 18.8 percent.
According to the authors, the result achieved is not the limit of the efficiency of hybrid solar cells. They plan to continue experimenting with other A3B5 semiconductors to find the one that gives the best efficiency.
The study will help in the creation of the so-called multi-junction solar cells — when several elements are combined into one and each absorbs a certain part of the solar spectrum. In the future, such devices can be used to generate electricity in space and for the development of autonomous low-power gadgets (wireless sensors or sensors).