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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Completed Research
Forum: The Clean Energy Project Forum
Thread: Organic Solar Cells reach 6% confirmed efficiency |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 6
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Organic Solar Cells reach 6% confirmed efficiency
Heliatek GmbH has developed organic solar cells consisting of so called "small molecules"- organic dyes which are synthesized from hydrocarbons. The solar cells are characterized by low cost, short energy payback time and inexhaustible availability of raw materials. The low cost, flexible light weight modules (0.5 kg/m²) will be manufactured on foil substrates in a continuous vacuum coating process. Recently, Fraunhofer ISE certified a power conversion efficiency of 6.07 % for a tandem solar cell using Heliatek's proprietary tandem cell technology. The cell with an active area of 2 cm² already possesses many of the essential characteristics of a large solar module. It was developed by Heliatek in cooperation with the Institute of Applied Photo Physics (IAPP) of the Technical University of Dresden based on results of the projects "Innoprofile" and "OPEG", both sponsored by BMBF. The result represents an important milestone on Heliatek's way to production of organic solar cells. In the medium term, it is planned to increase the conversion efficiency to 10%. As a next step on the way to mass production, Heliatek will cooperate with Fraunhofer IPMS in Dresden, who have many years of experience with technological issues of organic electronics. Their Center for Organic Materials and Electronic Devices Dresden (COMEDD) is the leading centre for production technologies of OLEDs, devices which are very similar to Heliatek's solar technology as far as production is concerned. To consolidate forces, the company runs several joint research projects with the Fraunhofer IPMS. http://www.printedelectronicsworld.com/articl..._00001650.asp?sessionid=1 |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I think that this is one of the neatest developments in solar to come along. Some thing with the potential not to cost an arm and a leg some time in the near future.
Neat. |
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otvaltak
Cruncher Joined: Dec 3, 2006 Post Count: 16 Status: Offline |
Has there been any estimation what kind of conversion efficiency will the WCG-"produced" cells have? I think it will be an anti-climax if they don't achieve at least, say, 10%.
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Thank you for bringing this up in the forums. We're glad that the WCG users are into clean energy.
 Solar cell efficiency is affected by four processes: light absorption, energy transport, charge separation and charge transport. We are looking for molecules which will improve at least one of these processes. Manufacturing constraints, such as cell thickness and material preparation also affect efficiency in solar cells. Moreover, each solar cell type is different. For instance, the organic solar cell which reached 6 % efficiency is a tandem solar-cell, which was generated in Alan Heeger's lab (Nobel Prize, 2000). This means that it is made of two different solar cell materials. As we are running simulations and developing theory, ultimately we cannot predict the overall efficiency, as that is highly dependent on the experimental use of these materials. While, ten percent efficiency will certainly be amazing, we hope that our database of findings will help the experimentalists make use of the best material for their implementation. An improvement in any of the processes mentioned above can lead to multiplicative enhancements of efficiency! |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
I also just read an article where an 18 year old from Nepal has created a solar panel using human hair. He used hair in place of the silicon. Pretty cool.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/articl...rgy-needs-human-hair.html |
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nasher
Veteran Cruncher USA Joined: Dec 2, 2005 Post Count: 1423 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I also just read an article where an 18 year old from Nepal has created a solar panel using human hair. He used hair in place of the silicon. Pretty cool. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/articl...rgy-needs-human-hair.html i have now spent the last hour reading the article and every other article i can find on the net is based on the dailymail one... alot of people seem to think its faked somehow or another it sounds too good to be true.. and i hope it works if it dose then i will be able to charge my cell phone or other portable device with something neet... hope to see more about this if its a true article  |
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