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IBM creates solar cell from earth-abundant materials
By siliconindia
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Friday, 12 February 2010, 18:57 IST |
3 Comments
Bangalore: IBM announced it has built a solar cell - where the key layer that absorbs most of the light for conversion into electricity, is made entirely of readily-available elements. IBM believes that this cell holds potential for enabling solar cell technology to produce more energy at a lower cost.
According to IBM, the cell is comprised of copper, tin, zinc, sulfur, and/or selenium, the cell's power conversion demonstrates an efficiency of 9.6 percent - 40 percent higher than the value previously attained for this set of materials. In order to achieve progress in solar cell research, IBM is leveraging its world-class expertise in microprocessor technology, materials and manufacturing."In a given hour, more energy from sunlight strikes the earth than the entire planet consumes in a year, but solar cells currently contribute less than 0.1 percent of electricity supply - primarily as a result of cost," said Dr. David Mitzi, who leads the team at IBM Research that developed the solar cell.
The IBM researchers describe their achievement of the thin-film photovoltaic technology in a paper published in Advanced Materials this week, highlighting the solar cell's potential to accomplish the goal of producing low-cost energy that can be used widely and commercially. "The quest to develop a solar technology that can compare on a cost per watt basis with the conventional electricity generation, and also offer the ability to deploy at the terawatt level, has become a major challenge that our research is moving us closer to overcoming," Mitzi added.
