A group of researchers in South Korea may have just achieved a breakthrough that's been stifling scientists for years, and it could change the future of solar power and energy as a whole.
According to Interesting Engineering, researchers at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, led by Professor Hobeom Kim, developed a new passivation process that allows formamidinium lead iodide perovskite solar cells to reach over 24% power conversion efficiency.
Before moving on, we should briefly explain what a perovskite is. It's a crystalline structure that can be made up of different materials. You can mix and match atoms and molecules depending on your needs. The name comes from the shape (similar to the mineral perovskite), not the chemical composition. They've shown potential for high performance in the solar power industry, but there have been multiple hurdles, including failed efforts to improve efficiency.
That's where this development comes in.
The passivation process is meant to reduce defects in the semiconductor material and improve efficiency, and Professor Kim's team achieved this by introducing hexagonal polytype perovskite into the process.
"A typical approach so far has been to introduce an external chemical reagent to deal with the defect problem," Kim said. "However, bringing in external reagents could directly impact the crystalline quality of the perovskite during crystal growth, so our work does not rely on such stabilizers. Instead we employ a chemically identical polytype of perovskite, 6H polytype containing a corner-sharing component that effectively suppresses the formation of defects in perovskite."
There are a lot of reasons this discovery is a big deal. For starters, perovskite solar cells are cheaper to produce than traditional silicon cells. They're also flexible and lightweight, which opens the door for the use of solar power in places previously thought to be impossible.
On top of that, perovskites have far greater potential for better efficiency than silicon solar cells. Perovskites can be made to respond to different colors in the solar spectrum by changing their chemical makeup, and they can be combined with material meant to respond to a different color, delivering more power from the same device.
In short, perovskites provide the opportunity to produce more energy at a lower cost. This comes at a time when solar power is already the cheapest it's ever been. This discovery could prove a major step forward in the effort to move away from the use of dirty energy, the main driver of the planet overheating, which leads to more extreme weather events that threaten lives and the global food supply.
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