Photon Multiplier Film is the simplest, the most cost effective way to a significant increase in power from solar photovoltaic modules
When existing solar photovoltaic modules are integrated with Photon Multiplier Film, incorporated advanced nanotechnology split each incoming blue and green photon of light spectrum into two infra-red photons. These excess of infra-red photons available to silicon cell results in more power conversion instead of a mare waste of solar energy.
A photovoltaic materials to take full advantage of the Sun’s spectrum is being developed by a start-up Cambridge Photon Technology
Cambridge Photon Technology is one of the finalist for The Spinoff Prize 2021 and an offshoot from the University of Cambridge, UK.
power conversion efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) material
As the renewable energy become the buzz word for our power requirements, the solar panel manufacturers are all set to make solar panels more energy efficient so that a good part of solar light spectrum can be used for electricity generation. Despite the best efforts or intensions of solar panels manufacturer they feel helpless due to limits on solar panels capability in terms of over all power conversion efficiency. Cambridge Photon Technology a startup is carrying forward a new path breaking research in which it is trying to give a major boost to amount of electricity the photovoltaic material in solar cells can produce.
Shockley–Queisser limit & Band Gap
Basic working principal of all solar cell is same. Light energy falls on a solar panel surface and energizes electrons in the photovoltaic material to move freely and causing electric current to flow. Silicon is the oblivious choice as photovoltaic (PV) material in the solar cell which is able to convert a fairly good amount of incident sun light into electricity. The Silicon as photovoltaic (PV) material exhibit best performance with photons in the red and near-infrared portion of the light spectrum. Photon of light having longer wavelength have lower-energy there for infrared, microwaves and radio waves simply do not have enough energy to excite the electrons in photovoltaic (PV) material to constitute the flow of electric current.
Where as photon of light with Shorter-wavelength have more energy. For this reason, green and blue light photons possess more energy than silicon can handle for electrical conversion. Thus resulting in wastage of energy in the form of heat.
Here the term Shockley–Queisser limit is a key term which determine the maximum efficiency of a photovoltaic (PV) cell. All PV materials have a property called a band gap that dictates how much energy can go into individual electrons; for silicon, it’s 1.1 electron-volts. That corresponds to photons in the near-infrared portion of the spectrum. Photons that have a higher energy than this band gap — the entire visible-light spectrum — can generate electrons, but any extra energy from the photon beyond the material’s band gap spills out as heat. Because of this limit, a conventional solar cell operating under ideal conditions can convert, at best, 29% of solar energy into electricity.
Singlet Exciton Fission, Quantum Dots and organic polymer Pentacene
The new technique, which relies on a phenomenon called singlet exciton fission, was developed by physicist Akshay Rao and his team at the University of Cambridge. Rao is also the start-up’s chief scientific officer. When light strikes a PV material, it creates an exciton, in which a negatively charged electron and a positively charged electron vacancy are connected by an electrostatic charge. But if the material is an organic polymer semiconductor, the photon can create not just one, but two lower-energy excitons — both of which can be converted to electric current. “You’re preserving the total energy that comes in and out, but you’re making the silicon receive a higher photon flux in the portion of the spectrum that it’s good at converting into electricity,” Wilson says.
The idea of splitting photons is not unique. “People had for many years had an inkling that you could use this phenomenon of singlet exciton fission in organic semiconductors to get around that Shockley–Queisser limit,” Wilson says. But it wasn’t until 2014 that Rao and his colleagues, working in the lab of physicist Richard Friend at Cambridge, first worked out a practical way to do it.
The plan from the outset was to look to commercialize this work, says Claudio Marinelli, an electrical engineer and entrepreneur who is the company’s chief executive. Rao spoke to a solar-panel manufacturer to understand what the industry needed and how his technology might help, and then approached people with business expertise, including Marinelli and Wilson, to help create a marketable product.
Rao developed a photon-multiplier film made up of a layer of an organic polymer called pentacene, studded with lead selenide quantum dots — small, light-emitting clumps of inorganic material. The polymer absorbs blue and green photons and converts them into pairs of excitons. These excitons flow to the quantum dots, which absorb them and emit lower-energy red or infrared photons. When the film is placed on top of a silicon solar cell, the light from the quantum dots shines onto the silicon (see ‘Colour shift’). Meanwhile, the red and infrared wavelengths directly from the Sun pass through the polymer film and hit the silicon as they normally would. The result is that more useable photons strike the silicon, increasing production of electrical current.
Rao calculates that this double-exciton technique could theoretically increase the potential conversion efficiency of solar cells to 35%2. The company hasn’t come anywhere near to that level yet, Wilson says, but, by the end of 2022, it is hoping to have created a prototype that converts about 31% of sunlight into electricity.
Photon-multiplier film on PV modules - a simple but effective approach
Other approaches can also increase PV efficiency. Tandem solar cells, for example, use materials, such as a group of crystals known as perovskites, that can capture shorter-wavelength photons. The materials can be used to build solar cells, which can then be wired together with silicon cells, creating a hybrid device that produces more electricity. But the difficulty with such a set up, Wilson argues, is that making two devices work together while producing different currents could be complex. Building solar cells out of a different material also requires an extra manufacturing process and new equipment, which could drive costs up. “Our whole approach has been to avoid these problems and to make a simple, non-toxic material with no electrical connections that add very little complication to existing design,” Wilson says.
The company’s photon-multiplier film could easily fit into existing manufacturing processes, Wilson says. A finished film could be sold to solar-panel manufacturers to place on their PV modules. A simpler approach might be to sell a precursor solution to the companies that make either the vinyl acetate layer that encapsulates the silicon or the glass panels that cover the solar cells. Panel manufacturers would then assemble the already-treated components into the final device. Whatever the approach, Wilson hopes a product will be ready for market within about three years.
Cambridge Photon Technology employs about a dozen people and has raised £1 million (US$1.4 million) in equity capital. It also has a number of research grants, and has access to researchers and facilities at the University of Cambridge to help develop the technology further. It has licensed four key patents from the university.
Although the company has made prototypes of the film and the quantum dots to show that they are efficient enough to work in a product, it has not assembled all the pieces into a working solar cell with improved efficiency. Once it proves its technology is viable, the potential pay-off could be great, Wilson says. “It’s really clear that there’s a fairly urgent need,” he says. “And this technology, if it works as promised, will go a long way to meeting that need.”