Solar cells just did the “impossible” with this 130% breakthrough
ScienceDaily • • general
Key Points:
- Researchers from Kyushu University and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz developed a molybdenum-based "spin-flip" emitter that captures extra energy from singlet fission, achieving energy conversion efficiencies around 130%, surpassing the traditional 100% Shockley-Queisser limit in solar cells.
- Singlet fission allows one photon to generate two lower-energy excitons, potentially doubling energy output, but capturing these excitons efficiently has been challenging due to energy loss via Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET).
- The molybdenum-based spin-flip emitter selectively captures triplet excitons by changing electron spin during near-infrared light absorption/emission, minimizing FRET losses and enabling efficient energy extraction.
- Collaborative efforts led to a system combining tetracene-based materials and the molybdenum complex, yielding quantum efficiencies of about 130%, indicating more energy carriers produced than photons absorbed.
- Although currently a proof-of-concept, this approach holds promise for enhancing solar cell performance and may have applications in LEDs and quantum technologies, with future work focusing on integrating these materials into solid-state devices.
