Method could facilitate cheaper and thinner solar cells

According to a statement from North Carolina State University, making the cells thinner should significantly decrease manufacturing costs for the technology.

‘We were able to create solar cells using a nanoscale sandwich design with an ultra-thin active layer,’ said Dr Linyou Cao, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at NC State. ‘For example, we created a solar cell with an active layer of amorphous silicon that is only 70nm thick. This is a significant improvement, because typical thin-film solar cells currently on the market that also use amorphous silicon have active layers between 300nm and 500nm thick.’

The ‘active’ layer in thin-film solar cells is the material that actually absorbs solar energy for conversion into electricity or chemical fuel and is sandwiched between layers of dielectric material.

‘The technique we’ve developed can be generally applied to many other solar cell materials, such as cadmium telluride, copper indium gallium selenide, and organic materials,’ said Cao.