Nanocones increase photovoltaic light absorption
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.029694
IEEE Spectrum : One of the limits of solar cell technology is the amount of light that the photoreceptors can absorb. Min Gu of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia and his colleagues have developed a new nanostructure they think can increase that limit by up to 15% in the UV and visible ranges. The “nanocones” that Gu’s team developed are topological insulators—they behave as insulators internally but have a conductive surface. The cones also take advantage of plasmonics , the generation of oscillations in the density of the material’s electrons when photons hit the surface. Due to those combined effects, an array of the cones positioned over a photoelectric cell focuses incident light on the cell.