Building the perfect battery is a hard problem. Batteries either too inefficient or too expensive or too unstable to power the renewable gadgets of the future. But a team of Harvard scientists just built a new kind of battery with a molecule found in food, and it could solve these problems.
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Solar cell development is typically a small numbers game, and a group of researchers at the University of Toronto have managed to eke out a few more percentage points in efficiency with a new record-breaking cell. Setting a high mark for this type of cell, the team’s Colloidal Quantum Dot (CQD) film harvests both visible and non-visible light at seven percent efficiency, a 37 percent increase over the previous record. The breakthrough was achieved by leveraging organic and inorganic chemistry to make sure it had fewer nooks and crannies that don’t absorb light. With the advantages of relatively speedy and cheap manufacturing, the technology could help lead the way for mass production of solar cells on flexible substrates. In the meantime, check out the source for the scientific lowdown.
Filed under: Science
Researchers create record-breaking solar cell, set bar marginally higher originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Aug 2012 03:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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