Efficiency records claimed for solar devices

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http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081208/full/news.2008.1281.html

Efficiency records claimed for solar devices

Light concentrator promises higher power output.

Katharine Sanderson

A transparent polymer plate has set a new record for concentrating the Sun's light on to a solar cell, boosting the promise of a technology that could lead to vastly improved solar-power capabilities at much cheaper cost.

Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) are plates of plastic or glass that have solar cells mounted along their edges. The concentrators are coated or impregnated with light-absorbing dye molecules; when the molecules re-emit the light, it bounces through the plate by total internal reflection until it hits the solar cell.

The devices can capture light from almost any angle, and because the area of the solar cells is much smaller than that of the entire plate, fewer cells can catch the same amount of light as a conventional solar panel, improving efficiency and potentially reducing costs.

Amanda Chatten from Imperial College London has now unveiled an LSC with a power conversion efficiency of 7.1%, beating the previous official record-holder by about 0.4%. That efficiency — a measure of how much power the LSC's solar cells generate, compared with the power of the light that hits its face — is still not very high, admits Chatten. "But it could find application where space is not an issue."

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