shock! Japan launches new plastic solar cell

Plastic solar cells, also referred to as organic batteries, use high polymers instead of silicon to convert sunlight into electrical energy, which reduces the cost and weight of solar cells. At present, the RIKEN Center for Materials Science and the Department of Polymer Chemistry at Kyoto University have found that newly developed polymer solar cells can reduce energy loss as well as silicon solar cells when converting photon energy into electrical energy. Photon Energy Loss - When converting the photon energy of sunlight into electrical energy, polymer solar cells lose more energy than silicon cells.

In polymer plastic solar cells, the higher the photon energy loss, the lower the voltage, which has always been one of the biggest limiting factors affecting energy efficiency. HideoOhkita, explained in NatureCommunication, published on December 2, 2015, but new polymer plastic solar cells are expected to break through this technology bottleneck.

The research team began to synthesize new polymer materials, and some key positions of sulfur atoms were replaced by oxygen atoms. They found that this new material could break through some of the key barriers to extracting and using solar energy. ItaruOsaka said: "Because this new polymer greatly reduces the energy loss of photons, it will increase the open circuit voltage and achieve 9% photoelectric conversion efficiency." achieving 15% photoelectric conversion efficiency is an important prerequisite for commercial use of polymer batteries. one.

"As a result of the increase in open circuit voltage and short circuit current, a single junction solar cell achieving a photoelectric conversion efficiency of 15% is a practical goal.