Materials


Sepioni. “Because of its remarkable conductivity and structural properties, graphene could enable a step change in the overall effectiveness of thin film solar cell technology – improving both the conversion efficiency and the cell durability. This would mean that the industry could be provided with photovoltaic devices delivering higher performance at a competitive point.”


But it will not be plain sailing to achieve this.


“There is quite a lot of research going on in graphene for photovoltaic applications and integration of graphene inside solar cells,” Dr Sepioni says, “but there are a few problems. First of all the fact that


costs to produce graphene are still high and, I would say from a technical point of view, the concern is the efficiency of the solar cells. They still can’t compete with the current ones (crystalline silicon construction). So that is a big question.”


The project, says Dr Sepioni, will explore different sources of grapheme and different kinds of deposition inside the solar cell. “I would say we have quite a strong plan and we hope it is going to work.”


Solar cell energy conversion efficiencies for commercially available cells are around 20%, says Dr Sepioni. “It would be really optimistic to achieve that number because 20% is really what the current


Dyesol produces solid-state dye-sensitised solar cells. 22 www.engineerlive.com


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29