| Jul 19, 2022 |
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(Nanowerk News) Solar panels often get a bad rap for spoiling the appearance of homes and businesses. Yet, this may be about to change.
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A research group has fabricated a highly transparent solar cell with a 2D atomic sheet (Scientific Reports, “Fabrication of near-invisible solar cell with monolayer WS2“). These near-invisible solar cells achieved an average visible transparency of 79%, meaning they can, in theory, be placed everywhere – building windows, the front panel of cars, and even human skin.
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Scientists have long sought to develop transparent solar cells, but the suitable materials have not existed thus far.
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| An optical image of a highly-transparent solar cell fabricated with a 2D atomic sheet. (Image: Toshiaki Kato)
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To make the solar cell, the team controlled the contact barriers between indium tin oxide (ITO), one of the most widely used transparent conducting oxides, and a monolayer tungsten disulfide. They coated various thin metals onto the ITO and inserted a thin layer of Tungsten Oxide between the coated ITO and the tungsten disulfide.
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“The way in which we formed the solar cell resulted in a power conversion efficiency over 1000 times that of a device using a normal ITO electrode,” pointed out Toshiaki Kato, corresponding author of the paper and associate professor at Tohoku University’s Graduate School of Engineering.
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The group’s efforts did not stop there. They also explored how their solar cell can be expanded for use in an actual solar panel.
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“We discovered the appropriate design modifications needed to avoid an unexpected voltage drop that accompanies increasing the device area,” said Kato.
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