We use cookies to enhance your experience. By continuing to browse this site you agree to our use of cookies. More info.

The University of Michigan has created a method to produce its extremely effective and semitransparent solar cells, which is a significant step toward delivering transparent solar cells that can be used for home windows.

In principle, we can now scale semitransparent organic solar cells to two meters by two meters, which brings our windows much closer to reality.

 Stephen Forrest, Study Corresponding Author and Peter A. Franken Distinguished University Professor, Electrical Engineering, University of Michigan

The study was published in the journal Joule.

Traditional silicon-based solar cells are fully opaque, which is great for solar farms and rooftops but would be useless for windows. Organic solar cells, on the other hand, may have a transparent light absorber made of a certain kind of plastic.

Due to technical difficulties, including poor efficiency and limited lives, organic solar cells have trailed behind their silicon-based cousins in terms of energy production. However, the new research from Forrest’s lab has reached record efficiencies of 10% with predicted lifetimes of up to 30 years.

As a result, the team is now focused on producing transparent solar cells. The electrical connections between the individual solar module cells at the micrometer size provide a significant challenge. The organic light absorbers are readily damaged by conventional cell patterning techniques that involve lasers.

Instead, researchers created a multistep peel-off patterning technique that produced a resolution down to the micron level. They applied thin plastic sheets and cut them into very tiny strips. The layers of metal and biological material are then applied. The strips were then peeled off, resulting in very tiny electrical connections between the cells.

Eight semitransparent solar cells, each measuring 4 cm × 0.4 cm and joined by 200 µm wide interconnections, were combined to form a single 13 cm2 module. The power conversion efficiency of the module, which was 7.3%, was almost 10% lower than that of the individual solar cells. Similar efficiencies are anticipated for meter-scale panels as well since this little efficiency loss does not grow with module size.

The cells are suited for use in commercial windows since they have a transparency that is over 50% and a greenish tint. This same technology makes it simple to attain higher transparency levels, which are preferable for the home sector.

It is now time to get industry involved to turn this technology into affordable applications.

 Xinjing Huang, Study First Author and Doctoral Student, Applied Physics, University of Michigan

The flexible solar cell panel will eventually be positioned in between two window panes. The target for these energy-generating window films is a transparency of around 50% and an efficiency of 10%–15%. Within a few years, according to Forrest, this will likely be accomplished.

The research we are doing is derisking the technology so that manufacturers can make the investments needed to enter large scale production.

Stephen Forrest, Study Corresponding Author and Peter A. Franken Distinguished University Professor, Electrical Engineering, University of Michigan

According to Forrest, the method may be applied to other biological electrical devices. In fact, their team is already using it to create white illumination using OLEDs.

The University of Michigan has filed for patent protection and is looking for collaborators to help commercialize the technology.

Along with teaching electrical and computer engineering, materials science and engineering, physics, and applied physics, Forrest has the Paul G. Goebel Professor of Engineering title. The studies were planned and carried out by co-authors Dejiu Fan (Ph.D. EE 2020), a former doctoral student. The devices were created at the Lurie Nanofabrication Facility with assistance from co-author and assistant research scientist Yongxi Li.

The U.S. Department of Energy provided the majority of funding for the study. Universal Display Corporation gave more assistance. Financial interests in Universal Display Corp. are held by Forrest and U-M.

Huang, X., et al. (2022) Multilevel peel-off patterning of a prototype semitransparent organic photovoltaic module. Joule. doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2022.06.015.

Do you have a review, update or anything you would like to add to this news story?

At the Advanced Materials Show 2022, AZoM caught up with the CEO of Cambridge Smart Plastics, Andrew Terentjev. In this interview, we discuss the company's novel technologies and how they could revolutionize how we think about plastics.

At the Advanced Materials Show in June 2022, AZoM spoke with Ben Melrose from International Syalons about the advanced materials market, Industry 4.0, and efforts to move toward net-zero.

At the Advanced Materials Show, AZoM spoke with Vig Sherrill from General Graphene about the future of graphene and how their novel production technique will lower costs to open up a whole new world of applications in the future.

Discover the OTT Parsivel², a laser disdrometer that can be used to measure all precipitation types. It allows users to collect data on the size and speed of falling particles.

Environics offers stand alone permeation systems that can be used for single or multiple disposable permeation tubes.

Grabner Instruments’ MiniFlash FPA Vision Autosampler is a 12-position autosampler. It is an automated accessory designed to be used with the MINIFLASH FP Vision Analyzer.

This article provides an end-of-life assessment of lithium-ion batteries, focusing on the recycling of an ever-growing amount of spent Li-Ion batteries in order to work toward a sustainable and circular approach to battery use and reuse.

Corrosion is the degradation of an alloy caused by its exposure to the environment. Corrosion deterioration of metallic alloys exposed to the atmosphere or other adverse conditions is prevented using a variety of techniques.

Due to the ever-increasing demand for energy, the demand for nuclear fuel has also increased, which has further created a significant increase in the requirement for post-irradiation examination (PIE) techniques.

AZoM.com - An AZoNetwork Site

Owned and operated by AZoNetwork, © 2000-2022