If there is one thing science and technology teach us, it is that it is always possible to improve even something that is already advanced and effective.
Take solar panels as an example: it is really good for the environment to be able to derive energy and livelihood from a resource that the Earth itself provides. Imagine that these instruments could be up to thousand times more efficient. This is what the discoveries and inventions made by researchers at Martin Luther University, a German university located in the cities of Halle and Wittenberg, suggest. What have they discovered? Simple, but obviously ingenious: by changing the material of the solar panels, the energy can be multiplied many, many times.
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image credit: Amble/Wikimedia – Not the actual photo
The photoelectric crystals instead of silicon: this is the innovation proposed by researchers at Martin Luther University. The study, published in the journal Science Advances, relies on the use of crystalline states composed of specific elements such as barium and calcium, which are particularly effective when applied to solar panels.
Silicon is currently a widely used material for solar cells, is inexpensive and quite effective. However, it is precisely in its overall performance that it can show certain limits, and it is from this hypothesis that the experimentation of new compounds based on ferroelectric crystals was born.
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image credit: Pxfuel – Not the actual photo
By combining different materials, scientists from the German University of Applied Sciences have succeeded in creating panels that are incredibly more efficient than conventional panels. They can provide up to a thousand times more energy, as tests carried out over a period of about six months have shown.
All of this, of course, bodes well for possible commercial use of the technology. Akash Bhatnagar, a scientist at UML, explains: “The interaction between the layers of the network appears to lead to a much higher permittivity. In other words, electrons can flow much more easily thanks to the excitation by. light photons. “
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image credit: Asian Development Bank/Flickr – Not the actual photo
Although the large-scale application of this technology has yet to wait, there is no doubt that such an innovation could represent a real milestone in the field of solar panels. It is to be hoped, as with other revolutionary inventions, that it will sooner or later become commonplace, producing a lot of energy without depleting the planet’s resources.
source used: Science Advances