Iowa State, Ames Lab researchers fabricate more efficient polymer solar cells

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.news.iastate.edu/news/2010/dec/solarcells

Iowa State, Ames Lab researchers fabricate more efficient polymer solar cells

AMES, Iowa - Researchers from Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratory have developed a process capable of producing a thin and uniform light-absorbing layer on textured substrates that improves the efficiency of polymer solar cells by increasing light absorption.

"Our technology efficiently utilizes the light trapping scheme," said Sumit Chaudhary, an Iowa State assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory. "And so solar cell efficiency improved by 20 percent."

Details of the fabrication technology were recently http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201002898/abstract;jsessionid=D83B2095A0572345BF38B850977F0568.d03t01">published online by the journal Advanced Materials.

Chaudhary said the key to improving the performance of solar cells made from flexible, lightweight and easy-to-manufacture polymers was to find a textured substrate pattern that allowed deposition of a light-absorbing layer that's uniformly thin - even as it goes up and down flat-topped ridges that are less than a millionth of a meter high.

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