Colloidal Quantum Dots Based Tandem Solar Cells Work In Full Spectrum

Harnessing solar energy is the need of hour. It being an abundant source of energy, is free of charge if you neglect its initial apparatus installation cost. Most of the people nowadays use solar panels for various purposes like generating electricity for solar water heating purposes etc. However, many of you might not know that the actual efficiency of the ordinary solar panels installed on our roof tops is actually not great. The efficiency of these vary somewhere near 14% to 18%. Hence to increase this efficiency, University of Toronto has pioneered a new device- A first ever efficient colloidal quantum dots (CQD) based "tandem solar cell".

A team of researchers led by Prof. Ted Sargent, dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, have recently developed a device to capture both, the energy in Sun's visible spectrum and the energy in Sun's infrared spectrum, thus increasing its efficiency theoretically to 42%, however the best ones limited to 31%. For developing a compatible interface to harness energy from both these spectrum, the team designed a cascade of very thin material (about a few nanometers)   to shuttle the electron in between the layers for visible and infrared region. The Graded Recombination Layer thus designed by the team efficiently links the visible and infrared solar harvesters, hence paving way to more effective solar cells.

Praising the latest development, Prof. Farid Najm, Chair of The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering said that, "Building efficient, cost-effective solar cells is a grand global challenge. The University of Toronto is extremely proud of its world-class leadership in the field." The technology as developed by Sargent and his team will be very useful in production of wide range of products, right from cell phones to automobile parts. It will make them more energy efficient than their previous versions. Sargent hopes everything of this happens in a near future, say 5 years.

An efficient way to produce solar energy is the key to prevent global warming plus a host of other environmental problems which are riddling human brains.  The research work by University of Toronto's scientists in developing Graded Recombination Layer technique is published in the journal Nature photonics.

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