[HN Gopher] Mystery of high-performing solar cell materials reve...
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Mystery of high-performing solar cell materials revealed
Author : rustoo
Score : 90 points
Date : 2021-11-24 13:13 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cam.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cam.ac.uk)
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Full text report: http://arxiv-export-
| lb.library.cornell.edu/pdf/2106.04942v1
|
| The summary in the paper is perhaps clearer than the article
| about it:
|
| > "Our study has significant implications for the fundamental
| understanding of defect tolerance in these materials and the
| design of halide perovskite solar cells, in particular for tandem
| cells. Using a novel suite of multimodal microscopy techniques,
| we unveil the remarkably complex energetic landscape that charge
| carriers must navigate in halide perovskites. We provide the
| first nanoscale picture of how this energetic landscape
| influences photodoping, carrier recombination and trapping."
|
| > "We find that the pursuit of homogeneous chemical compositions
| is not necessarily the best way to maximize the performance of
| this family of semiconductors, at least while the material still
| possesses deep trap clusters that lower device performance from
| the radiative limits. The existence of mixed Br and I samples
| induces the formation of beneficial local heterostructures that
| confer enhanced defect tolerance to these materials. In these
| regions, charge-carrier photogeneration and radiative
| recombination occurs through a rapid wide-to-narrow bandgap
| funneling process, more efficient than in the chemically
| homogeneous counterparts."
|
| What's really interesting is how these materials are heterogenous
| at the nanoscale, which is rather like how the biological light-
| harvesting protein complexes(LHC) operate, with ordered aligned
| arrays of chlorophyll molecules held in particular orientations
| within the protein structure that optimize funneling of photon
| energy into reaction centers (water-splitting for H2 production).
|
| However, these materials may not ever be commercially successful,
| due to issues like lead pollution and the working lifetime of the
| materials (they degrade fairly rapidly in full sun). Regardless,
| this is still very useful and important basic research.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I know nothing about the manufacturing cost nor the lifespan of
| these materials, but I'm curious if it would be viable to have
| infrastructure for periodically replacing and _recycling_ the
| panels. I.e., have regional facilities for receiving old
| panels, re-smelting the lead and other materials, and perhaps
| locally manufacture the replacements.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Materials cost should be significantly lower than Si or CdTe.
| The active layer of semiconductor is just 0.3-0.4 microns
| thick.
|
| https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/the-power-of-
| perovsk...
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This approach might work in an industrial setting for photo-
| electrochemical applications but is highly unlikely for
| residential or commercial power generation. mono-Si panels
| last for decades with no need for maintenance other than
| regular surface cleaning and no lead issues.
|
| However you could, in an industrial setting, do something
| like this:
|
| "Integration of a Hydrogenase in a Lead Halide Perovskite
| Photoelectrode for Tandem Solar Water Splitting 2020"
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32010793/
|
| Here you could use a catalyst regeneration strategy where you
| basically have a little production line onsite and as each
| unit wears out you just pop in a new one and send the old one
| to be regenerated, that's more plausible.
| Kalimoto wrote:
| There will be no advantage of doing this locally.
|
| There lifetime is too long to have enough locally and if we
| have 100% renewable, transport will be no ecological issue
| anymore.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > The lead salts used to make them are much more abundant [...]
| than crystalline silicon
|
| This statement fragment makes no sense. Silicon is the second
| most abundant element in the Earth's crust, after oxygen. If it
| means the specific form in crystalline silicon, well that doesn't
| occur in nature, but then neither do these lead salts.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| Lead salts also tend to be a lot more toxic than silicon.
| Putting that in something as plentiful and exposed as solar
| panels sounds like a big potential issue.
| 14 wrote:
| I think it would be fairly trivial to recoup the lead. Add a
| $500 deposits you get back when they are returned end of life
| cycle. Manufacturers should eat that initial cost with
| contract to return to them directly at end of life or they
| charge you the $500 as per contract if you fail to return
| them. If that doesn't scale financially then I guess it's a
| non starter. But something as big as a panel should be easy
| enough to recycle. Weather it is financially a viable
| business I don't know the math of recycling one of these
| things to even get an idea if it is possible.
| moffkalast wrote:
| This isn't a glass bottle you return next week, if you buy
| the panels they'll last you 30 or 40 years. At that point
| it's completely likely that the company will no longer
| exist when you go back for your deposit lmao.
| myself248 wrote:
| It's almost like we could create organizations that last
| longer than companies, and have the citizens' best
| interests at heart, to administer a deposit program like
| that. Perhaps these organizations could also govern other
| aspects of society instead of leaving those to
| corporations as well. Could we call them govern-ments?
| baggy_trough wrote:
| "have the citizens' best interests at heart" - citation
| needed
| pfdietz wrote:
| There are also versions of this technology that use tin
| instead of lead.
| boringg wrote:
| I mean cheaper technology at the same efficiency of todays solar
| cells but available in the next decade. Interesting but not
| changing the game. Silicon Solar will keep downward pressure over
| that time anyways so it will need to get significantly better.
|
| Lots of other options for viability im sure.
| pfdietz wrote:
| This technology will likely be rolled out as tandem cells with
| conventional Si cells underneath. So any improvements to Si
| cells will carry over to these, and there will always be an
| efficiency bump vs. just Si.
| boringg wrote:
| Could be - it's a decade away, lots can change. Hopeful for
| improvements but we've needed all this stuff like 2 decades
| ago.
|
| Better late then never I guess.
| ArtWomb wrote:
| >>> Combining a series of new microscopy techniques, the group
| present a complete picture of the nanoscale chemical, structural
| and optoelectronic landscape of these materials
|
| It's not even relevant to call it "microscopy" anymore, we
| require a new term. It's a complete thin film atlas of all
| interacting forces of nature. Better data for the models, means
| higher fidelity simulations.
|
| The question is can AI predict new materials? Can a simulation be
| sophisticated enough to predict say, high temperature
| superconductivity in rare earth cuprate perovskites?
| alteriority wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're talking about, but
| I read something a while back about using AI to predict if
| certain metallic glass alloys will have useful properties:
| https://phys.org/news/2018-04-artificial-intelligence-discov...
| dsign wrote:
| If we are going to speculate, then the question is, why
| couldn't AI do it? What kind of fundamental limitation would it
| hit? Data? But we could get a ton of data from already existing
| software[^1]. It is slow, but I have the feeling it wouldn't
| require as much computing as GPT-3, and it would perhaps be
| enough to train more efficient neural networks that can do the
| actual search.
|
| Because how important is for human life, a compiler industry
| that finds ways to translate complicated simulations to AI
| algorithms could be the next big thing.
|
| [^1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_quantum_chemistry_and_...
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