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26/09/2008
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Assistant professor Qiquan Qiao in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at South Dakota State University in Brookings, South Dakota, is investigating organic photovoltaics as a less expensive and more efficient way of harvesting solar energy
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“Right now the challenge for photovoltaics is to make the technology less expensive. Therefore, the objective is find new materials and novel device structures for cost-effective photovoltaic devices,” Qiao said. “The beauty of organic photovoltaics and organic LEDs is low cost and flexibility. These devices can be fabricated by inexpensive solution-based processing techniques similar to painting or printing. The ease of production brings costs down, while the mechanical flexibility of the materials opens up a wide range of applications.”
“The research at SDSU is focused on new materials with variable band gaps. The band gap determines how much solar energy the photovoltaic device can absorb and convert into electricity,” Qiao explained, adding that visible sunlight contains only about 50 percent of the total solar energy, which means that the sun is giving off just as much non-visible energy as visible energy. “We’re working on synthesizing novel polymers with variable band gaps, including high, medium and low band gap varieties, to absorb the full spectrum of sunlight. By this we can double the light harvesting or absorption.”
SDSU’s scientists plan to use the variable band gap polymers to build what are called multi-junction polymer solar cells or photovoltaics. These devices use multiple layers of polymer/fullerene films that are “tuned” to absorb different spectral regions of solar energy. Ideally, photons that are not absorbed by the first film layer pass through to be absorbed by the following layers. The devices can harvest photons from ultraviolet to visible to infrared in order to efficiently convert the full spectrum of solar energy to electricity.
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Author
Tom Shelley
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