Chemistry professor utilizes old materials to make more recent, better solar cells

• A Florida State University research study team is blending the old with the brand-new to produce a much more secure solar cell.

Professor of Chemistry Biwu Ma and also his team published a brand-new research that shows if you include a layer of ancient organic pigment to a perovskite solar cell, it raises the security as well as efficiency of the cell.

The study is published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

" Pigments are abundant, affordable and durable," Ma claimed. "When we combine them with perovskites, we can produce new high-performance hybrid systems. It's making use of the old with the brand-new, as well as with each other they produce something truly interesting."

Ma's study in new generation solar cell innovations has been focusing on dealing with the security concerns and also challenges of perovskite solar cells. A perovskite solar cell is a type of photovoltaic cell that includes a perovskite- structured substance, a lot of frequently an organic-inorganic lead or tin halide-based hybrid product, as the light-harvesting layer.

Over the past decade, research study on perovskite solar cells has taken off. When they were first reported in 2009, the power conversion performance signed up at around 4%, which is now as high as 25%. Nonetheless, there are downsides for commercial feasibility, such as the material's propensity to break down rapidly.

Scientist worldwide have been searching for that best formula to make them both secure and also very efficient.

The solar cell Ma's team utilized for the experiment-- based on methylammonium lead iodide-- had an effectiveness of 18.9% without the layer of pigment. With it, that number rose to 21.1%. The group also found that with the enhancement of the pigment layer, the cell without encapsulation could maintain 90% of its initial efficiency after 1,000 hrs in ambient conditions.

Including the layer of insoluble pigment by means of facile option handling and also thermal annealing also makes the cell hydrophobic, indicating water can not remain on the surface.

"We think that surface passivation of these cells using inexpensive pigments is an extremely appealing method to enhancing their security as well as performance," Ma said.