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A new family of materials for efficiently converting sunlight into clean energy
Confirmed
In Short: Kristin Persson, a senior scientist at Berkeley Lab and a professor in materials science and engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, highlighted the importance of developing new materials that can be synthesized efficiently.
Chinese researchers have developed a novel approach to solar power generation, creating a new type of submerged perovskite solar cell that can operate a few meters below sea level and harvest solar energy for years while retaining high efficiency.
According to Techspot, the cells can function underwater, where sunlight is scarce, and have been tested up to ten meters beneath the South China Sea.
The researchers designed the perovskite solar cell to exploit the narrow slice of sunlight that survives beneath the sea, which is different from the broad spectrum of sunlight that ordinary solar cells benefit from.
When brought back up, the modules had delivered 324 milliwatt-hours of energy into lithium-ion batteries, enough to power an LED panel later.
Meanwhile, silicon-based solar panels can usually convert around 20% of surface sunlight into electricity.
Persson noted, “Our new model enables material scientists and industry stakeholders to make promising new materials dramatically faster — and with higher purity and yield.”
The model can help accelerate the advancement of solid materials to cost-effective manufacturing and commercialization, closing the gap between material discovery and new technologies that benefit society.
The research team at Berkeley Lab has successfully demonstrated a powerful AI modeling approach that accurately and rapidly predicts how reactions between solid materials unfold over time.
This is the first-ever predictive model that accounts for how atoms travel through materials during solid-state reactions.
The model provides practical insights into the best recipes for making advanced materials, which can be critical for the commercialization of next-generation technologies such as batteries, sensors, and medical devices.
The development of these new materials is catalyzing the pipeline for space-based solar energy, as the artificial intelligence energy crisis drives innovation.
The energy captured by those solar satellites would then be beamed back down to Earth through the use of powerful lasers or through microwave beams, depending on the technology being applied.
What this adds
The research adds to the growing field of underwater solar technology, which could have significant implications for marine energy harvesting and deep-sea exploration.
What's confirmed
- Their goal is to use microorganisms to convert waste materials into food that people can safely eat.
What's still developing
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- “We deliberately chose these materials because the reactions are strongly influenced by kinetics,” said Persson.
- Persson is a senior scientist at Berkeley Lab and a professor in materials science and engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.
- Technology innovation often relies on the availability of inorganic solid materials that perform valuable functions, such as storing energy, emitting light, and catalyzing chemical reactions.
- Thanks to advances in AI-driven computational tools, scientists can identify materials with desirable properties for various technological applications.
- Yet, synthesizing these materials can be extremely difficult.
- It can take weeks to even years of trial-and-error experimentation to figure out the right recipe to make these materials.
- Hydrothermal vents are seafloor openings, found mostly along mid-ocean ridges where tectonic plates spread apart, that gush fluids heated by magma to 400°C (750°F) and fuel entire ecosystems that survive on chemical energy instead of sunlight.
- Around them thrives one of Earth’s strangest ecosystems—tubeworms, shrimp, and microbes that live on chemistry instead of sunlight, powered by the planet’s inner heat.
- Ten meters (32 ft.) beneath the South China Sea, sunlight has already lost much of what makes it useful on land.
- The uncontrolled movement or pinning of these vortices dissipates energy and disrupts superconducting states.