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Plasmonic Nanostructures Could Prove a Boon To Solar Cell Technology

Posted by samzenpus on from the brighter-and-brighter dept.

Zothecula writes "Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have found a way to harvest energy from sunlight more efficiently, with the help of so-called plasmonic nanostructures. The new findings suggest that plasmonic components can enhance and direct optical scattering, creating a mechanism that is more efficient than the photoexcitation that drives solar cells. The development could therefore provide a real boost to solar cell efficiency and lead to faster optical communication."

11 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Plasmonic nanostructures by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 4, Funny

    Someone's been spending too much time reading "The Big Book of Star Trek Technobabble".

    1. Re:Plasmonic nanostructures by SJHillman · · Score: 4, Funny

      Nonsense. The summary doesn't once mention tachyons OR reversing polarity.

    2. Re:Plasmonic nanostructures by mcgrew · · Score: 3, Informative

      But that's not all the article said; it isn't just more surface area, but with plasmonics tuned so that electrical resistance is lower and the maximum number of electrons can get knocked loose by a photon.

      Don't expect a physics class in a magazine article, but for someone not in the field wikipedia will do. I looked up plasmonics before reading the article and it made the article a lot more informative.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
  2. I will believe it when I can buy it by Amadodd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If I had a dollar for every time a uni came up with a new solar cell. The reality is that most of what you can buy is stil monocrystalline silicone, same as 50 years ago. Why is nothing commercialised?

    --
    Freedom of speech doesn't come with bandwidth.
    1. Re:I will believe it when I can buy it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Big Oil keeps nipping every new development in the bud before it can be commercialized.

    2. Re:I will believe it when I can buy it by rahvin112 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Every one of the inventions is being pulled forward. It is clear you have no idea what's available out there. Thin film is beginning to dominate commercial installation, in fact it's so much better that it's very difficult to even purchase thin films any more because all the production is allocated to commercial installations. Other techniques are out there and being used, the better the cell the more likely it'll be relegated to commercial installation. Most of what's available for retail purchase is the output of older cell lines that are no longer competitive on the commercial side.

      Solar is now significantly below $1 a watt and is approaching the point where in commercial installations it's amortized cost is approaching that of coal power. It's already cheaper than nuclear on all fronts.

    3. Re:I will believe it when I can buy it by theIsovist · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "But at a solar/green event I went to, I use so little electricity that only after mentioning that was it *maybe* worthwhile for me."

      This is a very good point. Homes, individually, don't take too much power, so powering each one of them with it's own generator (solar or otherwise) is redundant and expensive. Maintenance, too, is a pain for the average home owner. So centralizing power generation is great, for the most part. At least until you start factoring in transmission loss. What ideally will happen, and this will take time thanks to the cooperation it requires, is that district power plants will spring up. That a commercial building can produce so much power that it can sell the rest to local houses. You're starting to see this happen, and in the future, hopefully it will happen more. There's other benefits to this approach as well. Say, for instance, you run a massive server farm. This farm produces a lot of heat, and if you can capture this heat, you could use it to power your building and perhaps other neighboring buildings as well. It's an idea that's catching on in Europe and a few places in the US. So maybe solar power on your home isn't going to become viable, but that doesn't mean solar won't be in your future.

  3. Solar cells are already cheap enough by msevior · · Score: 4, Interesting

    While this all great Science, actually solar panels are already cheap enough in many parts of the world. Certainly they are in Australia since we have no tariffs on imported Chinese panels. What is really needed for greater market penetration is cheap storage. It would be great to have a around ~20 KWHr of storage for ~$2000 - $4000. Said storage needs to be stable over around 7000 cycles (20 years of operation) and provide of the order of 4 KW of power on demand. With this in place residential PV systems could provide over 20% of demand in many parts of the world.

    1. Re:Solar cells are already cheap enough by SJHillman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I can think of a few reasons:
      1) This doesn't scale. If we want solar to catch on a massive scale, we need a way to either store it, or a way for a night/cloudy/rainy power source to fill in the gaps
      2) A lot of places where solar would be really useful doesn't have grid access to begin with. Many third world areas (IE: large portions of Africa) come to mind, but there's plenty of other places - the US has large swaths of nothingness that could benefit from solar power but don't have grid connections.
      3) Portable applications, in which in would be impractical to run a temporary grid connection to it, would do great with some energy storage.

    2. Re:Solar cells are already cheap enough by SJHillman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      1. The idea is to reduce non-renewable sources in favor of renewable sources. The biggest issue facing this in the long run is the need to store the energy as most non-renewable sources are not continuously reliable (wind) or are cyclic (solar, some hydro). Saying you can load balance with a non-renewable resource is a short term solution.

      2. Solar is getting pretty cheap, and a lot of places are using it to some degree already. It's not unheard of for poor African villages to use solar to recharge car batteries each day. It's the storage that's the weak link in cases like these moreso than the solar generation.

      3. Generators get expensive fast once you consider the indirect costs such as transportation. Also, see 1. Most solutions not involving some kind of energy storage are short term solutions (within the lifetime of people already born).

  4. Re:This has got to be the 37th amazing improvement by timeOday · · Score: 3, Informative

    They do, all the time. Why do you think the cost of solar has decreased by 90% over the last 30 years?