|
|
| Texas NanoEnergy Collaborative |
Principal Investigator
Dr. Joseph Norm Barisci
SOLARNO Inc.
Project Period: 07/01/2007 - 10/30/2008
If the work is successful, it will solve the problem of increasing significantly the efficiency of non-Silicon thin film solar cells, making their use justified both for terrestrial applications and for space, e. g. NASA missions. SOLARNO Inc. will build and test prototype tandems comprising Dye Sensitized Cells (DSC) with CIGS(CuInGaSe2 thin film cells) and also Organic Photovoltaic (OPV) cells with CIGS, all having interlayers and top transparent electrode of transparent carbon nanotubes (CNTs), a technology developed in UTD and licensed to SOLARNO Inc.
This research on new types of hybrid tandem cells should lead to the understanding of physical processes at interfaces of carbon nanotube three-dimansional (3-D) networks with organic and dye-sensitized solar cells and will lead to development of thin film, flexible monolithic hybrid multi-junction cells with expected efficiencies of 20-25%.for applications in space, aerospace and terrestrial systems.
We propose to create and study several novel architectures of hybrid monolithic multi-junction solar cells by using sheets of strong, transparent carbon nanotubes (T-CNTs) recently produced at SOLARNO/UTD as a uniform interlayer. Such T-CNTs are dry-spun as a free standing 3-D aerogel sheet from a forest of multiwall CNTs and have high inherent electrical and thermal conductivities. The SOLARNO/UTD team has demonstrated advantages of flexible and chemically stable T-CNTs, densified from aerogels into 50-100 nm films as anodes in OLEDs [1] as well as in OPV organic photovoltaics with unoptimized ? = 4.4 % and also we used nanotubes in DSC dye sensitized solar cells. Carbon nanotubes use instead of ITO, or in combination with FTO, ZnO, etc., is particularly attractive for space applications due to their high radiation, chemical and thermal stability and low weight. Making tandems of OPVs thin film CIGS and with DCS will allow to increase the efficiency over 10 % and eventually over 20 %, and this solar cells will be flexible, deployable and radiation resistant .The proposed research on solar cells with that high efficiencies will be important for NASA missions within Constellation program for exploration of solar system: So such deployable flexible, light weight solar cells will find use in lunar house and in every space mission in which light weight portable solar energy harvesting devices will be needed. The technical merit of this work is in very simple and effective way to create complicated architectures by use of carbon nanotubes: Free-standing strong T-CNT networks can be laminated (like a scotch tape) onto any surface and their usefulness as transparent interlayers in monolithic Solar Cells has been already shown at UTD for a tandem of two OPVs, and tandem of DSC and CIGS cells (reported by us at MRS Fall 2006). UTD has pioneered the synthesis and studies of strong, transparent carbon nanotube sheets [1, attached], (this technology is licensed to SOLARNO Inc.) and demonstrated the merit of their use in organic photovoltaics [2,3] and in DSCs, for which a team has been awarded as Top 5 Talks/Cool papers prize of MRS in Spring 2007. Earlier UTD also developed high efficiency bulk heterojunction OPVs based on conducting polymer regioregular PHT and fullerene derivative, PCBM composites. Our work on transparent CNTs has been highlighted in Business Week (2005), National Geographic (June 2006), New York Times and in other publications. It has been cited by Discovery Magazine as eighth in the top 100 science stories of year 2005. Similarly our work on quantum dot based solar cells is highlighted by "New Scientist" as the research with highest technical and scientific impact. The co-PI of the project, Zakhidov was awarded a prestigious "Kapitza Medal for Scientific Discovery" for his work on novel nanostructured solar cells by the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.
|
|
| Page Updated/Reviewed: 02/27/2008 8:46 AM |
|
|
