Inexpensive Solar Cells Made Using Cheap Nickel For Electrical Contacts
5 August 2010 | Solar Power | 1 Comment
Replacing gold with nickel, scientists in Canada managed to make the most inexpensive solar cells today, even more cheap. They shown that using nickel in their colloidal quantum dots, will reduce prices of solar cells by 80%. Led by Dr. Ratan Debnath, scientists at the University of Toronto explained how nickel will work in their solar cells, making them cheaper and more efficient.
At first, scientists were not strongly convinced that nickel element will work well in those solar cells. “It was intermixing with our quantum dots, forming a compound that blocked the current flow from the device,” said Dr. Ratan Debnath. But after they added between the dots and nickel a barrier of just one nanometer of lithium fluoride, the efficiency of their solar cells has remarkably increased.
For now, these cells are the most efficient in all the world. The key to such a high efficiency lies in those colloidal quantum dots which can collect both visible and infrared light. “We have been able to increase dramatically the efficiency of our photovoltaics over the last several years and continue to hold the performance world records,” said, Professor Sargent, one of the scientists who participated at this experiments.
Tags: cheap photovoltaics, cheap pv, cheap solar cells, cheapest solar cells, colloidal quantum dots, gold cells, inexpensive solar cells, nickel solar cells, quantum dots solar cells
That is truly amazing. I’m looking forward to seeing the new line of inexpensive solar panels in the near future. The earth will truly benefit from this.