IIT-B develops perovskite solar cell with 26% efficiency
- July 3, 2023
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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IIT-B develops perovskite solar cell with 26% efficiency
Subject : Science and technology
Section: Msc
Concept :
- The National Centre for Photovoltaic Research and Education (NCPRE) at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) has developed a perovskite solar cell (PSC). The cell has been demonstrated an efficiency of over 26 per cent.
- To compare, with the best of the conventional solar cells in the market, you will be lucky to get an efficiency of 22 per cent.
- Efficiency is the percentage of sun’s light energy that falls on the cell that is converted into electrical energy.
Perovskite
- A perovskite is a material that has the same crystal structure as the mineral calcium titanium oxide, the first-discovered perovskite crystal. Generally, perovskite compounds have a chemical formula ABX3, where ‘A’ and ‘B’ represent cations and X is an anion that bonds to both.
- A large number of different elements can be combined together to form perovskite structures.
- Using this compositional flexibility, scientists can design perovskite crystals to have a wide variety of physical, optical, and electrical characteristics.
- Perovskite crystals are found today in ultrasound machines, memory chips, and now – solar cells.
Perovskite Solar Cells
- When used to create solar cells, they have shown potential for high performance and low production costs.
- Perovskite solar cells have shown remarkable progress in recent years with rapid increases in conversion efficiency, from reports of about 3% in 2006 to over 25% today.
- Perovskites can be tuned to respond to different colors in the solar spectrum by changing the material composition.
- Perovskite solar cells of certain compositions can convert ultraviolet and visible light into electricity very efficiently, meaning they might be excellent hybrid-tandem partners for absorber materials such as crystalline silicon that efficiently convert infrared light.
- It is also possible to combine two perovskite solar cells of different composition together to produce a perovskite-only tandem. Doing so could lead to even higher efficiency and more cost-effective tandem photovoltaic (PV) applications.
- While perovskite solar cells have become highly efficient in a very short time, a number of challenges remain before they can become a competitive commercial technology:
- Their stability is quite limited compared with that of leading PV technologies.
- They don’t stand up well to moisture, oxygen, extended periods of light, or high heat. Current operational lifetimes are not commercially viable.
Semiconductors Vs Perovskite Solar Cells
- All photovoltaic solar cells rely on semiconductors — materials in the middle ground between electrical insulators such as glass and metallic conductors such as copper — to turn the energy from light into electricity.
- Light from the sun excites electrons in the semiconductor material, which flow into conducting electrodes and produce electric current.
- Silicon has been the primary semiconductor material used in solar cells since the 1950s, as: its semiconducting properties align well with the spectrum of the sun’s rays and it is relatively abundant and stable.
- However, the large silicon crystals used in conventional solar panels require an expensive, multi-step manufacturing process that utilizes a lot of energy.
- In the search for an alternative, scientists have harnessed the tunability of perovskites to create semiconductors with similar properties to silicon.
- Perovskite solar cells can be manufactured using simple, additive deposition techniques, like printing, for a fraction of the cost and energy.
- Because of the compositional flexibility of perovskites, they can also be tuned to ideally match the sun’s spectrum.