A new mix of materials could make manufacturing efficient silicon solar cells a simpler, cheaper process.
Researchers at the Univ. of California, Berkeley, have created a high-efficiency solar cell without doping, the standard but expensive method of fabricating silicon solar cells. The new cell, dubbed dopant-free asymmetric heterocontact (DASH), does away with dopants by using layers of molybdenum oxide and lithium fluoride instead.
The average efficiency of the DASH cell is 19%. This is high for an academic lab, says Ali Javey, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the Univ. of California, Berkeley, as most labs typically do not have the resources and facilities to optimize products. It also approaches the efficiency of conventional silicon solar cells: Most crystalline silicon solar cells on the market have efficiencies ranging between 13% and 20%, depending on the grade of the silicon and type of panel, with the highest research cells topping out at around 25%.
In a typical silicon solar cell, the silicon is doped with atoms that either donate extra electrons to the semiconductor or create an electron vacancy, or hole. Silicon doped with atoms to create holes...
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