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Solar cells made using a process similar to spray painting have been developed in a research collaboration between scientists at two leading universities.
Experts from the University of Sheffield’s department of physics and astronomy and the University of Cambridge have created a method of spray-coating a photovoltaic active layer by an air-based process, similar to spraying regular paint from a can.
The cheaper technique could reduce the cost of solar cells, enabling them to be mass-produced. This would mean that the technology could one day be used in developing countries.
Professor David Lidzey from the University of Sheffield said: “Spray coating is currently used to apply paint to cars and in graphic printing. We have shown that it can also be used to make solar cells using specially-designed plastic semiconductors. Maybe in the future surfaces on buildings and even car roofs will routinely generate electricity with these materials.
“We found that the performance of our spray-coated solar cells is the same as cells made with more traditional research methods, but which are impossible to scale in manufacturing. We now do most of our research using spray coating.
“The goal is to reduce the amount of energy and money required to make a solar cell. This means that we need solar cell materials that have low embodied energy, but we also need manufacturing processes that are efficient, reliable and consume less energy.”
Most solar cells are manufactured using special energy-intensive tools and using materials like silicon that themselves contain large amounts of embodied energy.
Plastic, by comparison, requires much less energy to make. By spray-coating a plastic layer in air the researchers hope that the overall energy used to make a solar cell can be significantly reduced.
The downside to using plastics as the solar cell materials is that they are not as efficient at generating electricity as cells made from silicon.
The vast majority of solar panels found in the UK are made from silicon, with a life cycle of over 25 years. It is unlikely that plastic cells will ever be as stable, but if the energy cost of plastic cells can be lowered enough they will become more effective than silicon over their life cycle.
Professor Lidzey added: “Increasing the energy conversion efficiency and lifetime of plastic cells are significant issues that many groups are working on. It should also be noted that the cost of silicon solar panels have reduced significantly over the last few years so plastic solar cells will have to catch up with these improvements.”