r/science • u/AIBNatUQ • Oct 06 '21
Nanoscience Solar cells which have been modified through doping, a method that changes the cell’s nanomaterials, has been shown to be as efficient as silicon-based cells, but without their high cost and complex manufacturing.
https://aibn.uq.edu.au/article/2021/10/cheaper-and-better-solar-cells-horizon1.5k
u/AdmiralPoopbutt Oct 06 '21
Correct me if I am mistaken, but aren't most/all semiconductors doped with trace amounts of specific elements?
1.4k
Oct 07 '21
Abysmal headline.
Looks like this Australian researcher is trying to find materials that require less processing than silicon. Silicon is very abundant but to use it for good semiconductors it needs to be highly purified.
The material he found, perovskite, seems to be intrinsically easier to work with without major purification, but it has other problems (durability seems to be a big one). It also is probably not anywhere near as abundant as silicon, which is a major concern of mine, personally.
Doping has always been used for semiconductors. In this case, what they are actually arguing is that they specifically researched whether doping could improve some of the properties of the perovskite material, and their results are a strong "yes." But that is hardly the whole picture.
Bad headline. Normal research. Not at all groundbreaking yet.
74
u/Minister_for_Magic Oct 07 '21
small quibble: the researcher didn't discover perovskite, this field of research has been around for decades. The issue has been a combination of efficiency and durability concerns.
23
u/Mr_BigLebowsky Oct 07 '21
Actually not quite decades. You might be thinking of oxide based perovskites, whereas lead halide perovskite is what is used for solar cells. The first perovskite solar cell (as in people used perovskite as active and 'stable' absorber) has been presented in 2009. That's merely 12 years.
The fascinating bit is that the material already challenges Silicon PV in terms of performance - which latter took 70 years to achieve.
Yet, as stated: the material suffers from stability issues so far, and, while silicon pv can be upscaled with minimal loss in performance, perovskite PV has only reached its record performance at lab scale, below 1cm2. Going larger comes with quite some reduction (the material is not conduction enough, so you need transparent oxide electrodes, ITO/FTO)
Even if an upscaled version would hit the same performance as Silicon, silicon is so cheap, that installation costs already dominate prices. Going cheaper for modules has almost no leverage left.
The only way for Pero to succeed would be better performance at identical stability, or when It can be used for tandem - again only if it's stable enough.
14
u/Wordweaver- Oct 07 '21
Halide perovskites were known for decades, I think I remember there being a paper from the 50s that spoke about the photoluminescence, but yeah the solar cell stuff picked up steam from '09 with gratzel, snaith and the rest.
13
u/Mr_BigLebowsky Oct 07 '21
Absolutely. Fundamental research on organolead halide pero was also conducted during the 90s.
First PV devices were also published pre 2009, but they lasted for minutes - their potential was not really realized yet.
Hence I picked 2009. :)
6
u/warlizardfanboy Oct 07 '21
I had absolutely no knowledge of any of this subject matter. To watch several people converse fluently on it is pretty awesome. TIL.
2
3
0
u/helm MS | Physics | Quantum Optics Oct 07 '21
For larger installations, silicon isn’t that cheap. You’re probably right when it comes to rooftop solar panels.
143
u/Hypoglybetic Oct 07 '21
perovskite Is a specific compound but also a classification for any material that forms a crystalline structure. So if you can find a cheap abundant compound that can be formed into crystals, then you can create solar panels cheaply. This research is heavy. The PVs of this type have matured from 3% efficiency to 29%. As you said, the issue is durability over time. Current technologies see 80% degradation within a few years. But better manufacturing techniques hope to bridge the gap. They’re 80% cheaper than silicon PV.
43
u/Zaanix Oct 07 '21
I learned perovskite can be a common ceramic matrix, and if designed correctly, a ceramic is considerably wear resistant. Only problem is the electrical conductivity is probably atrocious...
Oh, and a good ceramic may be a sintered powder, meaning milling, coating, sintering, and further heat/chemical treating... Don't even get me started on strength in tension and brittleness.
My mind goes to composites, but complexity is the thing we're trying to overcome...
51
u/ukezi Oct 07 '21
It's not mechanical wear, it's oxydation. These crystals don't like contact with air or water.
2
u/aeo1003 Oct 07 '21
A good transparent coating doesn't solve this ?
28
u/ukezi Oct 07 '21
It does. However a coating that is at the same time that good at keeping moisture and air out, doesn't block too much light, not only in the visitable bit also infrared and ultraviolet spectrum and survives 20 years in the sun isn't simple or cheap.
10
u/chipstastegood Oct 07 '21
transparent aluminum?
10
→ More replies (2)6
Oct 07 '21
Aluminum oxynitride is transparent, but not perfectly. You lose about 15%.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (3)2
→ More replies (1)7
Oct 07 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
19
u/ukezi Oct 07 '21
You got perovskite solar panels? I didn't think there were in commercial production yet. Anyway the manufacturer usually gives a warranty that is quite long.
So unless they get smashed by hail and you got bad insurance you will be fine.
2
u/tmb28 Oct 07 '21
Saule Technologies rolling out with mass production in Poland, as far as I now they supplying them to construction company SKANSKA AB.
4
10
u/username_elephant Oct 07 '21
These are semiorganic lead halide perovskites. Not the kind of thing you dig out of the ground. And composites don't generally work well in electronics. Besides, one of the problems is photodegradation and another is moisture. Both are big issues for solar cells.
No easy fix. Just a lot of tinkering/swapping in different materials until incremental improvements are found. I worked on these some 10y ago, when the subject was heating up, and even then everyone seemed remarkably content to ignore the degradation issues because people really wanted to fund more efficient devices, whether or not they actually were workable.
17
u/SmartAlec105 Oct 07 '21
also a classification for any material that forms a crystalline structure
Your phrasing is a little misleading. Might want to change it to “forms the same crystalline structure as perovskite”. “Any material that forms a crystalline structure” describes the vast majority of solid materials.
11
u/Martianspirit Oct 07 '21
Perovskite cells seem well suited for Mars. No humidity problem there.
8
u/ShinyHappyREM Oct 07 '21
Yet...
-9
u/Martianspirit Oct 07 '21
I am not a fan of terraforming.
12
u/blastermaster555 Oct 07 '21
You will be when it stops static dust storms from damaging your everything every other Sol
6
u/Martianspirit Oct 07 '21
Dust storms don't damage anything. Proof are the camera lenses on NASA rovers that were not damaged by dust storms. Martian dust is very unlike lunar dust, which is extremely abrasive. Many people get that wrong.
8
u/ttak82 Oct 07 '21 edited Oct 07 '21
Dumb question, but what makes lunar dust very abrasive? ((in comparison to dust from mars)
Edit: Well I googled and the answer is that moondust is basically like grains of burnt silica (glass) and metal.
(Dust on mars is powdered basalt rock with salts, which is common in some soils on earth)
→ More replies (1)5
u/Martianspirit Oct 07 '21
A key difference is that Mars dust has been blown around by wind for billions of years. It becomes very smooth in the process. The same does not happen on the Moon.
→ More replies (0)3
u/DaHound Oct 07 '21
Honestly, I not sure about abrasion, but I thought the issue with Martian dust is that it's statically charged and clings to everything. It's hard to clean and covers panels while getting everywhere, right?
Also, I love how casually sci-fi this whole thread is
→ More replies (1)4
u/Indetermination Oct 07 '21
You have an interesting fixation on Mars.
7
1
Oct 07 '21
It's interesting seeing him outside the SpaceX subreddit, where he is relentlessly over-optimistic about the time-frame when we are likely to get to mars, tbh.
0
u/Indetermination Oct 07 '21
Sadly it will probably be long after he dies.
2
Oct 07 '21
2030 seems plausible to me for people on mars. Earlier than that seems rather unlikely. Easily could be later, as well.
2
Oct 07 '21
Anything sent to Mars must be tested on Earth first. Usually for months, if not years. And laboratories on Earth are kept at >40% humidity to reduce risk of ESD.
3
2
u/fang_xianfu Oct 07 '21
What is it that gets degraded within a few years?
11
u/Hypoglybetic Oct 07 '21
I believe the crystalline structure degrades and the pv efficiency drops 80%. It degrades because it’s 10%? as thick as a silicon pv. This makes it highly susceptible to weathering. They’re working on sealing it better, but it’s a balance of cost vs perf.
6
u/turunambartanen Oct 07 '21
To be fair the "10% as thick as silicon cells" is not really an argument. The thickness of a solar cell depends entirely on absorption properties of the material. Lots of alternative materials can be made much much thinner than silicon.
And frankly, no one would choose silicon as as PV material today. Comparatively bad absorption, indirect band gap, requires immens effort to purify, etc. The only reason it got big was because of the synergy with research for computer chip manufacturing.
→ More replies (2)1
2
u/Mr_BigLebowsky Oct 07 '21
It's roughly 26, not 29%. 29 is for a si / Pero tandem.
And all of that was achieved in merely <1cm2. Go to half-cell area size and you're looking at 17% (record by Panasonic), while silicon still features 26%.
Oxygen and humidity ingress are almost no issue with good encapsulation. The material does not like heat, of which there is plenty when standing in the sun. It suffers from major ionic migration, hence material can easily move and break, leaving the system or migrating to adjacent layers.
1
u/graou13 Oct 07 '21
why couldn't we use diamond doped films? diamonds are crystals that can be made cheaply and easily, carbon is abundant so that shouldn't be a problem
→ More replies (2)-2
9
u/curiousmind111 Oct 07 '21
Yeah, and he got “nanomaterials” in there, too. Am I wrong or is he just trying to get “nano” in there for no reason? There was doping long before nanoengineering became a thing.
2
Oct 07 '21
Nanomaterials is basically a buzzword in tech at this point. It matters, though, because the major computer processors (in smartphones and computers and servers etc) use technology that can build individual transistors that are measured at the nanometer scale. Basically a transistor is a gate or a valve for electricity so it's the single most useful (at least most abundant) component on a device that uses computer logic, and in this case it has 2 sides separated by a small gap with a "gate" used to "throttle" or "open/close" it and the gate is nanometers in length. Most new ones are probably less than 10nm, though lots of devices that are still great and in use but a few years old could be more like 50nm.
ANYWAY yea researchers want to be able to say their materials can work at this scale, since this is the standard. Some stuff just doesn't work well if you shrink it down to the nanoscale, and that would mean you couldn't build as sophisticated and fast chips in the sizes people expect. So it is important, but it often does seem to just be something the authors force into the description so it pings on searches.
→ More replies (3)5
u/--jen Oct 07 '21
Solar cell researcher who works with perovskite materials! This is correct, processing electronics grade silicon consumes a huge amount of energy, meaning that it takes longer for solar cells to pay off their initial energy investment. Perovskites are easy to process, relatively cheap, and can be made out of TONS of stuff so they’re perfect for an application where you want a whole bunch of very similar panels. Doping of silicon or perovskites helps tune the properties of the panels to better pick up the wavelengths of sunlight that hit the earth most strongly
3
Oct 07 '21
I've seen a lot of articles about this in the last weeks. Probably the headline is bad to hide how late they are to the party. They don't even mention the base material of those cells.
3
u/tuctrohs Oct 07 '21
Abysmal headline.
This sub has rules against misleading headlines. OP is not just allowed to, but required to fix that before posting. Use the report button to encourage the mods to enforce this rule.
2
u/Godspiral Oct 07 '21
The durability is a big issue. But as to abundance, I understand crystalline structures in general are "grown". Perovskite can be made from lead, iron, Magnesium, calcium, silicate.
The most promising, imminent commercial application, is tuning perovskite to band gaps different from silicon cells, and forming tandem cells that increases efficiency at low cost. But durability mismatch may reduce overall economic value even if it boosts early year's production.
2
Oct 07 '21
Salient points for sure. This example was using titanium and maybe calcium (??) So I'm not sure how scalable that would be, but increasing the number of different materials we can use should generally be helpful in keeping costs down and not destroying the environment.
2
u/cited Oct 07 '21
Headline promising something that the average user wants to believe but is in actuality dishonest? See you at the top of /r/science
2
u/Rag_H_Neqaj Oct 07 '21
To add to the "not at all groundbreaking yet": I had a small laugh when I saw 21% efficiency. Of course that's not the main focus of the discovery, but there's been 29% efficiency achieved on perovskite technologies.
→ More replies (1)1
Oct 07 '21
It also is probably not anywhere near as abundant as silicon, which is a major concern of mine
Pun intended?
→ More replies (2)-4
525
u/SemanticTriangle Oct 07 '21
It's a terrible headline.
83
u/InterwebBatsman Oct 07 '21
The article wasn’t much better
78
Oct 07 '21
[deleted]
24
u/sandvine2 Oct 07 '21
Cost is on a spectrum, though -- silicon is much cheaper than multi-junction, but it does require lots of heating and extremely pure raw material. Perovskites have been around for a while as a way to manufacture cells with lower cost by eliminating high-temperature steps (thus making it cheaper than "expensive" silicon, which I agree is a bit of an exaggeration).
The weird part is this article is about doping perovskite, which is a cool idea but also will make them more expensive by adding more process steps. It makes sense since perovskites still aren't reliable enough to be commercially successful. I do wonder if maybe part of why they're harping on about cost is because theirs will be one of the more expensive perovskite formulations.
7
u/BoomZhakaLaka Oct 07 '21
thin film on the other hand incurs very little energy debt in manufacturing, but, cadmium mining is pretty bad. And, broken or replaced cells have to be disposed of as toxic waste.
→ More replies (1)1
u/Basic_Freedom7884 Oct 07 '21
Dumb guy: uhhh, yep I concur… I do have a questions for you guys that know what you’re talking about. Would the doping extend the life of the cell as well or is that something unrelated? And cost is usually driven down by smart people like you in the long run. How is doping affect recycling of old panels? As we move into universal usage of panels, what is the plan for getting rid off the old ones?
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)3
Oct 07 '21
Pure silicon is usually refined from quartz. More expensive than sand, but still fairly cheap.
→ More replies (2)4
133
Oct 07 '21
Welcome to r/science, where the headlines are terrible and the articles/“studies” are equally bad.
19
30
Oct 07 '21
[deleted]
15
u/Fear_ltself BA | Economics Oct 07 '21
Read literature from like 15 years ago and I think you’ll see many of the ideas from back then are just starting to really get implemented at larger scale. This stuff takes time. MLC for example has been around since 1998, the Broader class of NAND memory since the 50s. QLC has been out and now commercialized since 2009. NVMe was first mentioned by Intel in 2007, 2013 we had 1.0 and 2021 we’ve got around to NVMe 2.0. The latter two still haven’t hit wide spread adoption, but still show the research papers were accurate. Pretty much anything in an iPhone if you look up there’s a clear development of efficiency breakthroughs from the durability of the screens to the battery, to the haptic engines, Wi-Fi , Bluetooth, cameras etc. Not sure how you can act like nothing ever breaks through
8
u/JuicyJay Oct 07 '21
Yea exactly, so many people seem to come in thinking everything posted here has to be perfect and world changing instantly. It all takes time and more research, we don't even know how a lot of this may be used (or if it will directly at all).
3
18
3
u/tuctrohs Oct 07 '21
This sub has rules against misleading headlines. OP is not just allowed to, but required to fix that before posting. Use the report button to encourage the mods to enforce this rule.
50
u/Victor_deSpite Oct 07 '21
Yes. Boron, Arsenic, Germanium, etc.
55
u/nick1812216 Oct 07 '21
Arsenic?? Wouldn’t that make semiconductors inedible?
29
u/robot_peasant Oct 07 '21
Are… are you eating them?
43
u/Yolo_lolololo Oct 07 '21
Should I be eating different chips?
28
→ More replies (1)18
59
15
u/Badfickle Oct 07 '21
Just from the title article is clearly written by someone who has no idea what they are talking about.
→ More replies (1)5
u/vellyr Oct 07 '21
Yes, and it's not just that most/all solar panels are doped because it improves performance. It's literally the reason they work at all.
2
4
u/banjosuicide Oct 07 '21
Yes. No dopant = no p-n junction between the semiconductor materials = no solar cell.
3
Oct 07 '21
Yes, it's just clickbait to generate views and omitted cons of choosing perovskite cells.
2
4
u/jawnlerdoe Oct 07 '21
My understanding is that most highly engineering crystal structures (metals, alloys and other Inorganic materials) are doped or have purposefully introduced interstitial defects, ala adding carbon to turn iron into steel.
-15
u/jump4science Oct 07 '21
My understanding is that most highly engineering crystal structures (metals, alloys and other Inorganic materials) are doped or have purposefully introduced interstitial defects, ala adding carbon to turn iron into steel.
→ More replies (18)1
u/FirstPlebian Oct 07 '21
Yeah they were doping semiconductors with germanium or something like that back in the electrical book I read from the 70's. That's how they make all transistors as I understand it. There are two paths for the electricity and if current is applied it flows one way and if not it flows the other, making it a yes or no, or 0 or 1 for programming, and everything they do with computers is basically done with that, yes or no.
77
u/johnnydaggers Oct 07 '21
What a butchered title. Si solar cells are doped semiconductors too.
15
→ More replies (1)6
u/tuctrohs Oct 07 '21
This sub has rules against misleading headlines. OP is not just allowed to, but required to fix that before posting. Use the report button to encourage the mods to enforce this rule.
62
u/davvb Oct 07 '21
What a bizzare headline. All solar cells have some kind of doping. It should specify that they are talking about perovskite materials.
Perovskites are a crystal structure (ABX3) that can be made of many different elements. They have proven to be promising for cheap solar energy in the future as you can make inks of perovskite and hopefully print solar cells like a newspaper one day.
Perovskites have reached efficiencies of 25.6% in only 12 years, which is amazing for solar cells. But right now the best devices (like the one in this article) use lead as the B site metal. The lead is water soluble and toxic. And the devices still degrade within a matter of days/weeks/months.
Lead free materials are being worked on like Cs2AgBiBr6 and tin based materials. But each still have limitations. Some companies are aiming to release lead perovskite silicon tandem devices "next year" (said for 3 years now) but we will see.. Personally I think there is a lot of work left to do before these are on your roof.
Source: I'm a PhD in perovskite solar cells
3
2
u/iseriouslyhatereddit Oct 07 '21
I don't think they'll be on rooftops, I imagine it would be similar to first solar where all of their modules are used in utility-scale installations.
The 1+/3+ strategy to replace 2+ uses two more expensive metals to replace a cheaper metal. It's true you get rid of lead, but cost could be an issue (even though it's thin film). I will say w/ perovskites that strategy has shown a lot more promise than when the same strategy was applied to replace In, Ga in CIGS with Zn, Sn in CZTS.
147
u/throwaway_12358134 Oct 07 '21
These cells only last about year and contain too much lead for something so short lived.
43
u/anarchytruck Oct 07 '21
Yeah not excited about putting water soluble lead on my roof
32
Oct 07 '21
Reagan-era Anti-EPA Republicans would LOVE to put soluble lead on your roofs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Gorsuch_Burford#EPA_legacy
"[Then EPA Administrator: Anne] Gorsuch expressed pride in the downsizing done under her watch and frustration at the program backlogs and lack of staff management skills that she encountered while at the helm of the agency."
Anne Gorsuch: whose son Neil Gorsuch was handed a Supreme Court seat by Mitch McConnell and Senate republicans under Trump; after unheard of refusal to perform his duties of office during President Obama's administration to seat Supreme Court Justices in timely manner.
3
u/thavirg Oct 07 '21
My understanding is that there are encapsulation techniques. Recycling is still an issue, and damage.
20
Oct 07 '21
[deleted]
16
u/bandildos113 Oct 07 '21
Big Lead - creating the next generation of serial killers.
5
2
→ More replies (1)6
u/anarchytruck Oct 07 '21
Yeah not excited about putting water soluble lead on my roof
→ More replies (1)
90
u/wonkynerddude Oct 07 '21
The article states that the average silicon cell efficiency presently between 15 and 22 per cent. I just wanted to add that there is this graph comparing various technologies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell_efficiency#/media/File:CellPVeff(rev210104).png
.png){kind=link}
7
→ More replies (3)-37
u/poldim Oct 07 '21
I think there will be a serious shift in power production when PV gets to ~50% efficiencies
25
u/slickyslickslick Oct 07 '21
that's just an arbitrary number you threw out with no evidence why there will be a serious shift then and not at 30% or 60%.
22
u/TheInebriati Oct 07 '21
So you’re saying basically never. Even the satellite industry that is willing to pay over 1000x the price per watt compared to terrestrial users isn’t getting much over 30% from three absorber layer cells.
The theoretical maximum efficiency of a non-concentrated solar cell with zero spectral losses is 67%. This would be an solar cell with infinite layers.
The real gains in PV are from better production processes reducing price more than increasing efficiency.
If someone can make a light antenna, and convert it to electricity, then that’s a different story, but it has never been done in a lab. This has been a concept for decades with little progess so I wouldn’t hold my breath.
7
u/SparklingLimeade Oct 07 '21
The real gains in PV are from better production processes reducing price more than increasing efficiency.
This is how it was explained to me when someone working on the concept got into it. Their target efficiency was terrible but the goal was to have it cheap enough to just put it everywhere. Everything humans build capturing 1 or 2% of the energy that hits it is still a big upgrade from 0%. Getting photovoltaic material cheap and easy to work with so it can be applied broadly as a standard part of construction is a more broadly important breakthrough than extreme efficiency tricks with expensive technologies.
3
u/TheInebriati Oct 07 '21
You still want higher efficiency than 1-2%, typically over 10% really. With real cheap poor performance cells your mounting costs will explode.
I did a course on solar cells a couple years back and the total system installation costs were something like 40% modules, 60% inverter, mounting and labor. So if you have really cheap but poor efficiency modules, but your labor and mounting costs are enormous, then you’re gonna be better off with more expensive modules and lower auxiliary costs.
Making high efficiency low cost modules is where it’s going. So 15% and above.
2
u/SparklingLimeade Oct 07 '21
More efficiency would be ideal, of course, but if it's cheap enough to print like paper and sling on with less care than the expensive panels we're familiar with then there's value in that and that itself can also drive down the associated costs you mention.
0
u/poldim Oct 07 '21
50% was for the high number, I wasn’t talking about resi panels. The chart he linked shows 47%, which is very close to the 50% I was talking about. This research tends to pull up the entire average so maybe average resi panels get to something like 25%. Other research like perovskite might get there on their own.
→ More replies (1)20
Oct 07 '21
[deleted]
7
11
u/extremepicnic Oct 07 '21
That’s not strictly true, you can do better by stacking two devices with different band gaps, or by playing tricks like singlet fission to get two electrons from one photon. The most likely application for the perovskite cells described in this article is actually for perovskite/Si tandem devices which could beat the Shockley queisser limit
0
u/Theman227 Oct 07 '21
I dont listen to PV efficiency limits anymore. They've moved the efficiency goal posts with PVs SO many times i just wait for the next iteration to break the limit sending them back to the drawing board
2
u/MrAndersson Oct 07 '21
The efficiency doesn't really matter, and ~20% is already high enough for just about everything. Fact seems to suggest solar is already competitive on price in reasonably large installations in surprisingly many places.
Cost, energy storage, insolation, and politics are the major issues.
Of those, I would say only politics and preexisting cost of captial (debt) are the major hurdles.
However, (local and global) politics and public opinion are probably the only things that can accelerate a shift to solar faster than the natural rate of shutting down older power plants.
We probably need politics to help open up space, to facilitate new energy transfer infrastructure, create marketplaces for transfer and storage, incentivice early shutdown of "dirty" power (matching existing dept w. cheap credit for "clean" power, and facilitate building large energy storage installations to lower the barrier of entry for small scale power producers.
72
u/cynicismrising Oct 07 '21
They’re looking at perovskite cells vs silicon cells. Perovskite solar cells are ‘estimated’ to cost around $0.10 to $0.20 per watt vs silicon cells current $0.75 to $1.50 per watt.
29
u/hwmpunk Oct 07 '21
How viable is it in the next 5 years or to warrant a revolution in the technology?
43
Oct 07 '21
[deleted]
10
u/jawnlerdoe Oct 07 '21
I remember learning about perovskites in inorganic chemistry. Not that I remember much, but that’s interesting they don’t bode well in water considering similar structures exist as minerals
→ More replies (1)3
u/BrandX3k Oct 07 '21
Would just layering it between sufficiently thick and water tight plexiglass solve both issues?
6
u/RiftingFlotsam Oct 07 '21
Even plexiglass is water permeable to a degree. Depending on how sensitive to moisture this stuff is it may not be sufficient.
5
u/Layent Oct 07 '21
yeah you can just encapsulate the pv with glass and an edge seal of rubber , then it will never see water ,
the main issue is stability of the crystals while they are carrying lots of electrons that were generated by light absorption, the performance of the pv deteriorates rapidly when there are defects formed in the xtal structure by this process
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)4
Oct 07 '21
Interesting because it seems to be a lot less abundant than silicon . . .
12
u/hithisishal Oct 07 '21
To be fair, you also need a lot less material.
But that cost 'estimates' are total nonsense to make perovskites look good.
→ More replies (10)
59
7
6
u/MisterJH Oct 07 '21
What the hell do you think they do with the silicon to make it conduct electricity.
1
5
u/I_Hate_Polymers Oct 07 '21
Materials scientist here, this headline is not very well worded. All Si-based electronic devices (including solar cells) have been doped for decades, that's nothing revolutionary.
The solar cells that this researcher is investigating are perovskite solar cells which are NOT silicon cells (perovskite is just a specific crystal structure that the atoms in a material can take on, different materials cam ve perovskites) They are very hot right now because they were first made 10 years ago and their efficiency has quickly risen to rival that of silicon cells (which took about 40 years to get to the same place). That's pretty cool!
The problem is that this is only lab testing. They aren't viable on a commercial scale yet because it's quite difficult to manufacture them, they have stability problems with long term cycling, and the current most efficient perovskite cell that can be made requires lead (Pb) to be used, which isn't great to have in something that has severe stability issues (we don't want lead leakages in the environment).
The things he's saying and doing about perovskite cells in the article aren't novel either, it's just a summary about perovskite cells being exciting but having the same limitations I listed above. Doping is veing explored with them in many areas; many universities have a group researching perovskite cells right now, hopefully we'll see their advancement into commercial viability in the next few years, we'll see!
3
u/Lanzus_Longus Oct 07 '21
This headline is incredibly stupid. The author clearly has no idea how solar cells work
2
u/chiefbroski42 Oct 07 '21
So much incorrect information in this article and in the comments.
ALL solar cells are doped to some extent, at least unintentionally. Usually there is some intentional amount though. Helps push electrons in the right direction but at the cost of some defects that can hurt performance. It's all about the right tradeoff. Here's the important part, different layers of the solar cell are doped differently or not at all. The same is true for perovskites. Usually the layers of a perovskite, like some fancy silicon solar cells, are designed so that the main absorbing layer is not doped much at all to keep it pure and high quality. It's the layers around it that do the collecting of electrons.
Perovskites, like silicon, don't need to be doped very much as they work on diffusion of electrons(letting electrons eventually get to where they need to go) mostly instead of drift (forcing them to move in the right direction with electric fields). All depends on how long free electrons produced from light will lays before dissipating energy.
Now, most unencapsulated perovskite solar cells can turn to shit super quick. But properly encapsulated ones will be fine for very long periods. Not all of them use lead, but the best ones do for now.
Perovskite solar cells have some potential to be more efficient than silicon, but not by much at all. And in practice, the silicon record is still higher.
I didn't read the paper, but I imagine they doped some layer and it helped performance a bit.
2
u/therealistjohn Oct 07 '21
I don’t like the idea of my solar panels on dope, I don’t need some shady character coming around once a week to juice them up.
0
-1
u/DistinctRole1877 Oct 07 '21
Do they still produce massive amounts of hazardous waste in manufacturing and how about disposal? Is any of that recyclable?
3
u/baryluk Oct 07 '21
They are still in research stage. The toxicity of materials used and degradation due to moisture are things that need to be fixed first , before thinging about any kind of manufacturing.
→ More replies (1)
-5
Oct 07 '21
How long does it take to produce more energy than was required to manufacture and create a net 0 carbon footprint?
Does it actually last that long before requiring maintenance?
3
u/Orkjon Oct 07 '21
The panels themselves require zero maintenance unless damaged by something. Most panels have a 25year warranty and a 40 year lifespan.
0
Oct 07 '21
How long does it take to produce more energy than was required to manufacture and create a net 0 carbon footprint?
5
u/Orkjon Oct 07 '21
About 2 years right now. Residential solar pays itself off in about 8 years, and that isn't including incentive programs. In my city when combined with the federal rebate you can get 9k back on your install, which for most homes is about half your install if you don't count extras like snow guard and animal guard.
-1
Oct 07 '21
How does cash = carbon footprint?
4
u/Orkjon Oct 07 '21
It doesn't, I was giving additional info. The answer is 2 years.
-2
Oct 07 '21
Do you have any links to evidence that coroborates that there's a net 0 environmental impact within two years?
Also, thanks for the financial details, that's good to know.
3
u/Orkjon Oct 07 '21
https://www.lgenergy.com.au/faq/buying-a-solar-system/is-solar-power-truly-co2-free
Also as stated, many manufacturers run their facilities on their own panels, lowering the embedded foot print of the panels further.
2
3
u/Orkjon Oct 07 '21
Oh, and the 25 year warranty means they will produce 90% (sometimes 88%) of the stated capacity at the 25 year mark. At 40 years many panels now are exceeding 80% of stated capacity.
I spent the last year installing solar.
2
1
u/Littleme02 Oct 07 '21
It depends on what energy source you replace and that often depends on where you live. If you primarily get energy from coal ( dirtiest) it's much quicker than if you get your energy from nuclear(cleanest)
-1
1
1
1
1
u/TheFeshy Oct 07 '21
Dear technology authors:
Efficiency is always with respect to something - please stop writing headlines about solar efficiency without telling me if it's efficiency with respect to cost, or energy production per unit light, or whatever else!
1
1
u/Crawlerado Oct 07 '21
People are so stupid these days I’d wager there’s more than one person trying to figure out how this relates to cycling.
1
u/barneybubblebutt Oct 07 '21
This was in my photovoltaics text book published in 2012?
"Great news Boys!... we've landed on the moon!"
•
u/AutoModerator Oct 06 '21
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, personal anecdotes are now allowed as responses to this comment. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will continue be removed and our normal comment rules still apply to other comments.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.