University cooperation to increase efficiency of solar cells

Solar cell energy has globally assumed a stable and growing position as an energy source, and while the powerful sunrays slowly cover more and more of our energy consumption, an increasing number of researchers attempt to find out how we can optimize the development of solar cells. Today, there is a loss of 70% of the sun’s energy when using existing solar cells. With researchers from Aarhus University, the MCI will now try to improve this through the SunTune project.

At the Mads Clausen Institute, researchers work on developing organic solar cells. These must be investigated with the purpose of gaining increased harvest of solar energy in that the cells must be able to absorb a larger amount of the specter of the sunlight. This is done by implementing special nano structures into the solar cells to convert the long-wavelength light from the sun so that it can be absorbed in the solar cells. So far, solar cells have not been able to convert and absorb this light, which has cause loss of energy. This development will result in much more efficient solar cells and better utilization of the sun’s energy.