New solar panels set new efficiency record

American scientists from the National Laboratory for the Study of Renewable Energy managed to create a new photocell (solar panel), which broke two efficiency records at once.

Scientists happily shared their achievements on the popular Nature Energy portal.

What numbers did you get

So, according to American scientists, they received an efficiency of 39.2% with natural light from a photocell. and as much as 47.1% with a concentrated beam of light, the illumination of which is higher than the natural beam at 143 times.

Both announced indicators are world records.

What the new element is made of

In order to understand how it turned out to achieve such values, it should be said about the composition of the new panels.

In fact, the new panel is a layer cake, in which six layers are created from different materials at once, namely:

Aluminum-gallium-indium phosphide, aluminum-gallium arsenide, gallium arsenide and three types of gallium-indium at once.

It was the collected variety of materials that made the most of the sunlight to generate electricity.

In addition, auxiliary materials were also added between the above layers, due to which the levels in the panel became 140.

At the same time, I would like to note that the panel itself is three times thinner in thickness than a human hair.

As the engineers assume, further work in this direction will still make it possible to overcome the sign value of 50% efficiency.

What is the minus of development

As usual, there were some obvious disadvantages of the technology. In this case, the main disadvantage is the cost of the product. Due to the fact that the components are quite expensive.

But scientists have already proposed a solution to this problem. Namely, the use of a system of concave mirrors, which will maximize the concentration of the light beam and thereby significantly reduce the required area of ​​the solar panel. This means that less expensive materials will be spent on production.

Conclusion

So far, nothing is known about the development prospects, and even more so it is not clear when the new solar panels will be available to a wide audience. So we can only wait and hope that the development will not be lost within the walls of the laboratory. Thanks for attention!