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Solar panels from cheap raw materials

09.08.2012

Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have learned how to make low-cost, high-efficiency solar panels from virtually any semiconductor material.

Solar panels convert sunlight into electricity using semiconductor materials that have a photovoltaic effect, i.e. absorb photons and release electrons. One of the obstacles to their ubiquitous distribution is the high cost of the panels, due to the high requirements for the materials from which they are made - crystalline silicon, gallium arsenide, cadmium telluride and others, no less exotic. The new technology allows the use of cheap semiconductors such as metal oxides, sulfides and phosphides, which can be found literally everywhere, but until now they were considered unsuitable for making solar panels.

The essence of the new technology, called SFPV, is to use the known effect of the electric field, which changes the concentration of charge carriers in the semiconductor. An electric field penetrates into the upper electrode, which makes it possible to create pn junctions in semiconductors. In this case, the phenomenon is observed even in those semiconductor materials that require complex high-temperature chemical processes to create a pn junction. One configuration of the silicon electrode used the thinnest graphene coating, which allows the electric field to penetrate the electrode and control the concentration of charged particles in the semiconductor.

Thus, SFPV technology allows you to create high-quality pn-junctions in almost any semiconductor - just choose the right electrode shape. In practice, this means the possibility of using a wide range of different materials in promising areas of solar energy and electronics.

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