Jan 24 2011
Governments and researchers engaged in the development of solar technology are spending billions of dollars every year in developing an efficient technology to harvest solar energy and convert it into electric power cost-effectively.
The solar developing companies have been systematically looking into the use of thin film solar panels manufactured, utilizing nanotechnology for increased power production and taking efforts to market the technology.
Recent findings by Prof. Eran Rabani, who works at the Tel Aviv University's School of Chemistry at the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, has refuted the claim about the increased power generation efficiency of thin film solar panels. His findings published in the issues such as Chemical Physics Letters and Nano Letters are anticipated to bring in new cost-effective and efficient solar technologies. His research mixes a type of theoretical approach along with computer simulations to prove that the current procedure of generating maximum number of charge carriers also known as electrons and hole utilizing a single photon will not achieve the desired result of increased efficiency. His research disputes the theory that a single photon absorbed in a thin film solar panel stimulates a pair of electron-hole to generate electricity, thus exciting increased number of electron-hole pairs after the successful absorption of the photon to generate increased level of photon energy, which can be fruitfully changed into electric power for increased efficiency of the solar device.
Though the current findings of Prof.Rabani and the other researchers from Israel spells bad news for the solar panel developing companies but it will now allow more researches in the specified area and will make the future researches free from a conceived notion to find out a new technology that can make solar power production cost-effective.
Source: http://www.aftau.org/