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From left:Paderborn University researchers Prof Dr Uwe Gerstmann, Dr Marvin Krenz and Prof Dr Wolf Gero Schmidt with their poster on energy transport in the solar cell.
Get a daily digest of the latest news in tech, science, and technology, delivered right to your mailbox. Subscribe now.that can harness more energy from sunlight than ever before. The key to their innovation is a thin layer of organic material called tetracene that enhances the efficiency of silicon solar cells. Their findings have been published in the journalAccording to Prof Dr.
However, he adds, the silicon solar cells currently used to convert sunlight into electricity have some limitations. One of them is that they waste some of the energy from short-wave radiation as heat instead of using it for electricity.To overcome the problem of energy wastage, Schmidt and his team have devised a way to add an organic layer made from the semiconductor tetracene to the silicon solar cell.
They have discovered that the key to speeding up the energy transfer is the presence of special defects at the interface between the tetracene film and. These defects are unsaturated chemical bonds that occur when hydrogen atoms are removed from the surface. These defects create electronic interface states that have varying energy levels. These energy fluctuations act like a lift that transports the excitations from the tetracene to the silicon.
Interestingly, these defects are usually considered a source of energy loss in solar cells. But in this case, they are essential for the rapid energy transfer. Schmidt says, “The results of our computer simulations are truly surprising. They also provide precise indications for the design of a new type of solar cell with significantly increased efficiency.”Exciton transfers are ubiquitous and extremely important processes, but often poorly understood.
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