Thanks to nanostructures that scatter and channel light, University of California, San Diego electrical engineers are working toward thin-film “single junction” solar cells with the potential for nearly 45 percent sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiencies. This effort to break the theoretical limit of 31 percent efficiency for conventional single junction cells recently received a big funding boost from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar America program.

In November 2007, a team of Jacobs School electrical engineers led by professor Edward Yu won an $885,000 grant from the U.S. DOE to further develop their thin-film and nanowire solar cell devices that incorporate nanostructures, including semiconductor quantum wells and photon-scattering nanoparticles.

The new devices could lead to big gains in thin-film solar cell efficiency by increasing both the number of photons thin-film solar cells absorb and the number of excited electrons the same devices collect.   Read More...