Darren Orf writes in Popular Mechanics about a discovery to improve the lifespans of solar panels.
- Halide perovskites are a group of materials that promise higher performance in solar panels at a lower cost.
- Despite their upside, halide perovskites are not very resilient and can quickly decompose when exposed to light, heat, and extreme voltage (all necessities to generate solar power).
- A research team at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology thinks that it has solved this issue by finding “hidden structure” of surface concavities on individual crystal grains which hurt the stability of the perovskite films.
- The scientists were able to eliminate the concavities to improve resiliency.
“While this research will help clear one of the largest hurdles to bringing these films to a solar panel near you, scaling up production from these specialized lab devices will be a gargantuan challenge of its own. Regardless of the many years of work ahead, thankfully we now know that weakened stability among perovskites solar cells is a fixable flaw and not an immutable feature.”
Read the full article here.
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