FW: U of T Researchers Crack Full-Spectrum Solar Challenge | Product Design and Development

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U of T Researchers Crack Full-Spectrum Solar Challenge
By University of TorontoMonday, June 27, 2011
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In a paper published in Nature Photonics, U of T Engineering researchers
report a new solar cell that may pave the way to inexpensive coatings that
efficiently convert the sun's rays to electricity.

The U of T researchers, led by Professor Ted Sargent, report the first
efficient tandem solar cell based on colloidal quantum dots (CQD). "The U of
T device is a stack of two light-absorbing layers – one tuned to capture the
sun's visible rays, the other engineered to harvest the half of the sun's
power that lies in the infrared," said lead author Dr. Xihua Wang.

"We needed a breakthrough in architecting the interface between the visible
and infrared junction," said Sargent, a Professor of Electrical and Computer
Engineering at the University of Toronto, who is also the Canada Research
Chair in Nanotechnology. "The team engineered a cascade – really a waterfall
– of nanometers-thick materials to shuttle electrons between the visible and
infrared layers."

According to doctoral student Ghada Koleilat, "We needed a new strategy –
which we call the Graded Recombination Layer – so that our visible and
infrared light-harvesters could be linked together efficiently, without any
compromise to either layer."
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