VATIS UPDATE Article

A team of researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel, has developed a method to improve solar cell efficiency by almost 70%. This might be a major breakthrough in overcoming the limitations of actual methods. The team, led by Professor Carmel Rotschild, developed a photoluminescent material (PL) in which both photonic and thermal excitations are generated. The full paper has been published in the Nature Communication.

When the material absorbs solar radiation it converts the heat and light into an “ideal” radiation, which in turn impinges on the PV cell and enables higher conversion efficiency. Testing found that the cell’s efficiency improved to more than 50%. “Solar radiation, on its way to the photovoltaic cells, hits a dedicated material that we developed for this purpose, and the material is heated by the unused part of the spectrum,” said Assaf Manor.