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UCLA professor Yang Yang, member of the California NanoSystems Institute, is a world-renowned innovator of solar cell technology whose team in recent years has developed next-generation solar cells constructed of perovskite, which has remarkable efficiency converting sunlight to electricity.
Despite this success, the delicate nature of perovskite—a very light, flexible, organic-inorganic hybrid material—stalled further development toward its commercialized use. When exposed to air, perovskite cells broke down and disintegrated within a few hours to few days. The cells deteriorated even faster when also exposed to moisture, mainly due to the hydroscopic nature of the perovskite.
Now Yang's team has conquered the primary difficulty of perovskite by protecting it between two layers of metal oxide. This is a significant advance toward stabilizing perovskite solar cells. Their new cell construction extends the cell's effective life in air by more than 10 times, with only a marginal loss of efficiency converting sunlight to electricity.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gravis on Tuesday October 20 2015, @03:05AM
The difference was dramatic. The metal oxide cells lasted 60 days in open-air storage at room temperature, retaining 90 percent of their original solar conversion efficiency.
while 60 days in ideal conditions is nice, i would hold off on breaking out the champagne just yet.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday October 20 2015, @03:55PM
They sound right on the border of being spacecraft qualified. It would be a huge PITA but almost survivable for a spacecraft where the extreme annoyance would be worth the extra couple watts generated.
On the other hand, miss a launch window or two due to booster problems or scheduling or WTF and things could get very iffy.