Fresh off the news of the world's largest concentrated solar power plant opening over the weekend in Abu Dhabi, a group of scientists from the Nano-Science Center in Denmark found that using nanowires rather than standard metal conductors for the construction of solar panels can improve energy production by a factor of up to 15.
The find marks an important breakthrough for the efficiency of solar cells designed to produce electricity.
"Due to some unique physical light absorption properties of nanowires, the limit of how much energy we can utilize from the sun's rays is higher than previously believed," says researcher Peter Krogstrup.
Back in 1961, it was determined by William Shockley and Hans Queisser that the maximum efficiency of a solar cell is just under 34 percent. This was called the Shockley-Queisser limit. The new find, however, indicates that nanowires can boost photovoltaic efficiency past that limit.
"It's exciting as a researcher to move the theoretical limits, as we know," Krogstrup says. "Although it does not sound like much, that the limit is moved by only a few percent, it will have a major impact on the development of solar cells."
Nanowires are more effective for storing solar energy because they center the sun's rays into a small region in nanowire crystal. The wavelength of light from the sun is bigger than the diameter of the crystal, which causes resonance of the light in and around the nanowires. This leads to an efficiency increase in converting the sun's energy.
The discovery has important implications not only for solar cells, but also quantum computers and a variety of other electronic devices.
"It's exciting as a researcher to move the theoretical limits, as we know," Krogstrup says. "It will have a major impact on the development of solar cells, exploitation of nanowire solar rays and perhaps the extraction of energy at [the] international level."
That said, nanowires won't be immediately available in solar technology.
"It will take some years before production of solar cells consisting of nanowires becomes a reality," Krogstrup says.
The study is published this week in the journal Nature Photonics. For those who missed the solar plant in Abu Dhabi, you can check it out here.
