Cheaper Solar Cells Developed At Oxford, The Trick? - Lead Goes Out, Tin Comes In.
University of Oxford researchers have become successful in developing new high-efficiency solar cells at lower costs than at what they are currently manufactured. The trick that helped them achieve this is by replacing the lead by tin. lead in solar cells based on lead halide perovskites can be replaced with tin. Called "Perovskite solar cells" by the research team at Oxford, these solar cells deliver 17% efficiency at turning sunlight into electricity and will be capable of generating solar energy over a large at cheap costs, if all goes well. Even though the amount of lead in each solar cell is tiny, its presence was a major obstacle in their commercialization.
Tin is a safer, non-toxic and abundantly available alternative to lead. The team is right now working on creating a stable version of the solar cell and are of the belief that they will lead us to mass production of conventional silicon-based solar cells, without the need of intensive energy input.
Henry Snaith, who leads the research work shares that the demonstration of these new tin-based perovskite solar cells has opened up many new research avenues for optimizing the materials used. The only obstacle so far is that, their prototype's lead-free material started degrading in the presence of oxygen and moisture. Therefore, the researchers prepared the tin-based cell in a sealed nitrogen atmosphere and are now confident that moving forward, these tin-based solar cells will be able to operate in atmospohere for long periods of time.
Source: <a href="https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-05-01-lead-out-tin-cheap-solar-cell" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Lead out, tin in for cheap solar cell | University of Oxford</a>
Tin is a safer, non-toxic and abundantly available alternative to lead. The team is right now working on creating a stable version of the solar cell and are of the belief that they will lead us to mass production of conventional silicon-based solar cells, without the need of intensive energy input.
Henry Snaith, who leads the research work shares that the demonstration of these new tin-based perovskite solar cells has opened up many new research avenues for optimizing the materials used. The only obstacle so far is that, their prototype's lead-free material started degrading in the presence of oxygen and moisture. Therefore, the researchers prepared the tin-based cell in a sealed nitrogen atmosphere and are now confident that moving forward, these tin-based solar cells will be able to operate in atmospohere for long periods of time.
Source: <a href="https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-05-01-lead-out-tin-cheap-solar-cell" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Lead out, tin in for cheap solar cell | University of Oxford</a>
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