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posted by Fnord666 on Monday February 20 2017, @05:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-light-at-the-end-of-the-printer dept.

A [University of Toronto] Engineering innovation could make printing solar cells as easy and inexpensive as printing a newspaper. Dr. Hairen Tan and his team have cleared a critical manufacturing hurdle in the development of a relatively new class of solar devices called perovskite solar cells. This alternative solar technology could lead to low-cost, printable solar panels capable of turning nearly any surface into a power generator.

[...] "The most effective materials for making ESLs [electron-selective layers] start as a powder and have to be baked at high temperatures, above 500 degrees Celsius," says Tan. "You can't put that on top of a sheet of flexible plastic or on a fully fabricated silicon cell — it will just melt."

Tan and his colleagues developed a new chemical reaction than enables them to grow an ESL made of nanoparticles in solution, directly on top of the electrode. While heat is still required, the process always stays below 150 degrees C, much lower than the melting point of many plastics.

The new nanoparticles are coated with a layer of chlorine atoms, which helps them bind to the perovskite layer on top — this strong binding allows for efficient extraction of electrons. In a paper recently published in Science, Tan and his colleagues report the efficiency of solar cells made using the new method at 20.1 per cent.

Efficient and stable solution-processed planar perovskite solar cells via contact passivation. Science 02 Feb, 2017. DOI: 10.1126/science.aai9081


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @07:13AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2017, @07:13AM (#469192)

    Printable solar panels should have much lower install costs because they are much lighter.