It is well known that traditional solar cells are made of beautiful but expensive silicon crystals. Recently, researchers from the University of California and Berkeley Laboratory have discovered a method that can use any semiconductor material to make solar cells. This research result is likely to open the door for cheap solar applications.
Almost all solar panels on the market are made by cutting two sheets (each about 200 microns, or 0.2 mm) from a large piece of silicon and coating them Enhanced photovoltaic effect (phosphorous materials and bromine were used to make N-type and P-type wafers, respectively). The two wafers are then laminated together, with the electrodes attached to the top and bottom, and the protective glass is then outsourced on this complete device—see a standard solar cell.
In theory, you can actually coat any semiconductor material to make a solar cell. Unfortunately, those materials that are cheaper and more readily available (such as copper oxide) do not maintain the surface coating well, and eventually lead to the disintegration of the PN junction; the silicon wafer can keep the surface coating well, but very expensive.
To solve this problem, California researchers have developed a new type of solar cell called "screening-engineered field-effect photovoltaics," abbreviated as SFPV. Unlike traditional methods that apply the coating directly on the material, this new process uses a miniature electric field to achieve the same effect. As long as this electric field continues to exist, the PN junction can be maintained and this photovoltaic cell will continue to generate electricity. The energy required to maintain this electric field is also significantly less than the energy generated by the photovoltaic effect.
The electric field effect is actually not a new discovery (for both men and women have heard of field effect transistors?), but it is a novel idea to apply it to photovoltaic cells. The main hurdle for researchers at the University of California and Berkeley Labs is that in this scenario, a layer of contacts is needed above the semiconductor material to generate the electric field, but it is clear that this layer of conductor will block the sunlight reaching the battery. Their proposed solution is also not complicated: either use a thin layer of conductor, such as graphite (it is transparent), or use many narrow fin-shaped conductors (as shown).
SFPV battery structure
What about the next step? “This research has opened the door to the practical application of various semiconductor materials (such as many metal oxides, sulfides and phosphides) in photovoltaic cells. At present, we are trying to find the most potential for producing cheap and efficient solar cells. "The materials." Will Regan, the lead author of the paper, told Ars Technica, a technology blogger.
Even if a certain optimal material is found, it is not easy to put it into large-scale production: standard photovoltaic cells are a huge industry (mainly in China), but these manufacturers do not produce this new solar cell. Equipment and technology. Compared with the computer chip industry that has invested trillions of dollars in silicon materials, the difficulties and challenges faced by photovoltaic cells are not so great, but we still need to make a lot of efforts to turn to new types of SFPV photovoltaic cells. But this new technology can indeed save a lot of production costs, no doubt, who can be the first to use this technology to produce solar power prices significantly lower than fossil fuels, who will be the winner in the future market.
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