Significant discovery in Solar energy Technology by an Israeli Professor

 

Perovskites are the new elements that will change the whole dynamics of the Solar energy industry. Tandem perovskite solar cells are capable in theory of 45% efficiency, though ST(Solar-Tectic LLC) has set a more realistic 30% efficiency goal, higher than the best silicon wafer technologies such as PERC, PERL, HIT, HJ cells with 25-26.6% efficiencies. The efficiencies of today's solar cells generally range from 14%-25%.

 

“Whether these bold new solar cells hit markets next year or in 2025, there’s agreement among experts that they will transform solar panels” Dr. Greg Wilson, site leader at the CSIRO Energy Centre in Newcastle, NSW, says the commercialization of Perovskite Solar cells is realistic.

Solra, a Photovoltaic technology company based in Israel, has come up with an effective method to replace the Perovskite cells with the use of an Indium tin oxide layer.

 

                                      Prof. Lioz Etgar, Associate Professor of chemistry at  Hebrew University

 

“Before this research, it was impossible [to remove perovskite],” Prof. Lioz Etgar, head of the Excitonic Solar Cells Research Group and a chemistry professor at the university, told The Media Line.

“You needed to throw out the whole solar cell and make a new one, so this is one of the advantages of this technology,” Etgar, who led the research, explained. “We took one step forward and actually designed a new architecture for solar cells.”

 

“The main advance here was firstly using a material in the structure that hadn’t been really been used in this way so far, which is an indium tin oxide layer,” Schneider told The Media Line. “This layer acts as an electrode of the cell, but it’s also a stable material that allows for us to be able to remove any degraded perovskite.”

The use of this oxide, he notes, provides a cost-effective way to prolong the use of solar cells.

“The perovskite is the key component in the solar cell, but it is also the most sensitive and the most likely to be the one to be damaged over time,” Schneider said.

 

The discovery made by Prof. Lioz Etgar and team has contributed to the significant progress in the field of Solar Energy research and development.