Solar Cells for Greener and Safer Energies
http://www.icfo.eu/newsroom/news/article/3157[font size=4]ICFO researchers report on low-temperature, solution-processed, environmentally friendly inorganic solar cells made with Earth-abundant materials.[/font]
[font size=3] It is known that the most common inorganic solar cells, displayed over roof tops and in solar farms, are made of silicon. However, the production of silicon solar cells can be expensive and energy demanding and the final modules are heavy and bulky. Many lower-cost thin film solar cells, alternative to silicon, are composed of toxic elements such as lead or cadmium, or contain scarce elements such as indium or tellurium.
Now ICFO researchers Dr. Maria Bernechea, Dr. Nicky Miller, Guillem Xercavins, David So, and Dr. Alexandros Stavrinadis, led by ICREA Prof. at ICFO Gerasimos Konstantatos have found a solution to this increasing problem. They have fabricated a solution-processed, semi-transparent solar cell based on AgBiS2 nanocrystals, a material that consists of non-toxic, earth-abundant elements, produced in ambient conditions at low temperatures. These crystals have shown to be very strong panchromatic absorbers of light and have been further engineered to act as effective charge-transporting medium for solution-processed solar cells. The study has been published in Nature Photonics
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The team of researchers at ICFO developed these cells through a low temperature hot-injection synthetic procedure. They first dispersed the nanocrystals into organic solvents, where the solutions showed to be stable for months without any losses in the device performance. Then, the nanocrystals were deposited onto a thin film of ZnO and ITO, the most commonly used transparent conductive oxide, through a layer-by-layer deposition process until a thickness of approximately 35nm was achieved.
“A very interesting feature of AgBiS2 solar cells is that they can be made in air at low temperatures using low-cost solution processing techniques without the need for the sophisticated and expensive equipment required to fabricate many other solar cells. These features give AgBiS2 solar cells significant potential as a low-cost alternative to traditional solar cells.“ as Dr. Nicky Miller states.
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...should have taken a look at the ACS's "Endangered Elements" web page.
ACS Endangered Elements
This is just another in a long series of "solar breakthroughs" that will have no effect whatsoever on the climate disaster before us.
I note that just about every issue of Environmental Science and Technology in recent years has one or two articles on the biological effects of nanosilver, widely used in a wide variety of products including cosmetics. It's antimicrobial properties are, um, problematic to say the least, and under certain circumstances has been shown to induce neurotoxicity in rats.
ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng., 2014, 2 (7), pp 1566–1573
I don't really know why anyone even bothers with solar energy anymore. It just eats money, including research grants that would be better spent elsewhere, and it's consistently and totally useless.
Have a nice day tomorrow.
