Researchers at The University of Tokyo's Institute of Industrial Science (IIS) have made advancements in the design of transparent solar materials. These could be suitable for roof-mounted solar panels or ones that are placed on windows. Instead of silicon, the cell is based on a perovskite material. A thin perovskite layer absorbs sunlight to generate an electric charge, which is transmitted to an electrode layer sandwiched between perovskite and a glass backing.
A major challenge in the field of solar panels is to create a material that absorbs enough light to produce power, yet still manages to remain transparent. To achieve this, the IIS researchers exploited the properties of the human eye. They took account of the fact that, for visual purposes, not all colors are equal. In fact, the eye is much more sensitive to green light, in the middle of the spectrum, than red or blue. According to the rules of "human luminosity," a good supply of green light is the main priority for visibility. Their new material was therefore designed to mostly absorb red and blue light, while letting green through.
The researchers added another layer to their cell - nano-sized cubes of silver. Like perovskites, the use of silver nanocubes in solar cells is not new - they are already known to increase the efficiency of light-capturing. However, to focus on harvesting the red wavelengths, which are missed by the perovskite, the researchers boosted the nanocubes' effect by coupling them with the cell's other electrode layer, also made of silver. This encourages the "plasmonic antenna effect", which increases the cell's light absorption ability and, thereby, its efficiency.
"Like conventional solar cells, the plasmon resonance effect depends on absorbing light," co-author Tetsu Tatsuma says. "However, with the electrode-coupled plasmons, it's much easier to tune the wavelengths that are absorbed, simply by controlling the size of the nanocubes and the spacing between the nanocubes and the electrode. This allowed us to sensitize our cell to red light, making it complementary to the optical requirements of human vision."
After incorporating the nanocubes, the overall light sensitivity was strengthened, which allowed the perovskite layer to be made much thinner. Despite the thin layer, an impressive power conversion efficiency of around 10% was retained. More importantly, the visual transparency was increased by 28%. This raises the hope of developing commercial solar cells that can be coated over windows, increasing the productivity of solar power.
