News — solar cells

Researchers at Tohoku University have discovered a method to quickly, cost-effectively, and non-destructively detect carbon impurities in nitride-based crystals that are used in electrical and optical devices such as LEDs and transistors.  Light can be used to analyze the crystals for defects through omnidirectional photoluminescence (ODPL) spectroscopy, which is a marked improvement over the current methodologies available to the semiconductor industry.  ODPL illuminates the crystal, in this case gallium nitride (GaN), and is absorbed by it, exciting the electrons within.  When they return to their ground state, the crystal emits light to dissipate the absorbed energy.  Spectroscopy will then determine...

Congratulations to researchers at CSEM and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) on this new breakthrough!  MSE Supplies LLC is proud of being a supplier of TCO (transparent conductive oxide) substrates with custom or standard patterns to researchers at NREL and other labs to accelerate their innovations.  Learn more about how you can benefit from using customized and standard TCO substrates in your projects. NATURE ENERGY | AUGUST 25, 2017 The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), CSEM and EPFL have taken an important symbolic step forward. Working together, they were able to demonstrate the high potential of silicon-based multi-junction...

　　The new perovskite solar cells have achieved an efficiency of 20.1 per cent and can be manufactured at low temperatures, which reduces the cost and expands the number of possible applications. Credit: Kevin Soobrian 　　A U of T Engineering innovation could make printing solar cells as easy and inexpensive as printing a newspaper. Dr. Hairen Tan and his team have cleared a critical manufacturing hurdle in the development of a relatively new class of solar devices called perovskite solar cells. This alternative solar technology could lead to low-cost, printable solar panels capable of turning nearly any surface into a power...

 For the first time, it has been possible to produce functional OLED electrodes from graphene. The process was developed by Fraunhofer researchers together with partners from industry and research. The OLEDs can, for example, be integrated into touch displays, and the miracle material graphene promises many other applications for the future. High quality single layer graphene films can be ordered from msesupplies.com.  The Fraunhofer Institute for Organic Electronics, Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP from Dresden, together with partners, has succeeded for the first time in producing OLED electrodes from graphene. The electrodes have an area of 2 ×...

Over the last several decades, scientists and engineers at national labs, universities, and private companies continue to explore and develop new types of cells and push the capabilities of existing ones, because an ideal technology is yet to be developed. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) maintains a plot of compiled values of highest confirmed conversion efficiencies for research cells, from 1976 to the present, for a range of photovoltaic technologies. IEEE Spectrum recently partnered with three of the world’s leading independent test labs to create an interactive and updated history of record-breaking photovoltaic (PV) cells. While the full charts are...