These days, the best silicon solar cells are creeping towards 27 per cent efficiency. That seems pretty low, but these tiny gains are a big deal.
Wikimedia Commons: Fulvio314But redder photons carry less energy than their bluer counterparts, said Andrew Tilley, a chemist at the University of Melbourne's Bio21 Institute.That ends up being a large proportion, too — around 20 per cent of sunlight falling on a solar cell simply does not contain enough energy to provide that 1.1-electron-volt boost.Photons that aren't energetic enough provide a large chunk of wasted energy. This is called the transmission loss.
Of course not. Physicists and chemists are finding ways to capture energy that would usually be lost in transmission and thermalisation and turn it into electricity. The key is to use old tried-and-tested silicon with another semiconducting material to create a"stacked" solar cell.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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