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					</table>A research team led by Japan’s <a href="https://www.kyushu-u.ac.jp/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kyushu University</a>, in collaboration with Germany’s <a href="https://www.uni-mainz.de/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU) Mainz,</a> claims to have achieved a light conversion efficiency of approximately 130% in solar cells, exceeding the 100% barrier.
This efficiency, which can enable higher performance in solar cells, was achieved after using a molybdenum-based metal complex called a “spin-flip” emitter to harvest multiplied energy from singlet fission (SF) for light conversion.
Photons from sunlight pass their energy to electrons after striking a semiconductor, in this case, a solar cell. The electrons are activated, driving an electric current.
However, the efficiency of this process varies under sunlight. Lower-energy infrared photons cannot excite electrons. Meanwhile, higher-energy photons that do excite electrons, such as in blue light, lose their excess energy as heat. This results in solar cells using only one-third of the sunlight.
This utilization ceiling is known as the Shockley–Queisser limit.
Yoichi Sasaki, Associate Professor at Kyushu University’s Faculty of Engineering, noted that there are two main strategies to break the Shockley–Queisser limit. The first strategy involves converting lower-energy photons to higher-energy photons. The second strategy, employed by the research team, involves using SF to generate two excitons from a single exciton photon.
An exciton is a neutral, bound quasiparticle that is formed when a photon is absorbed by a semiconductor material, causing an electron to jump to a higher energy state, leaving behind a positively charged hole.
Typically, one photon can generate a maximum of one spin-singlet exciton after electronic excitation, which is a process in which an electron in an atom or molecule absorbs energy and jumps from a lower to a higher energy level without leaving the atom.
The SF technology can split the high-energy singlet exciton into two lower-energy spin-triplet excitons. This process can, in theory, double the number of usable excitations. The research team stated that while some organic semiconductors, such as tetracene, exhibit this process, capturing the SF-born excitons has remained a challenge.
“The energy can be easily ‘stolen’ by a mechanism called Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) before multiplication occurs. We therefore needed an energy acceptor that selectively captures the multiplied triplet excitons after fission,” said Sasaki.
To select an appropriate energy acceptor for harvesting the excess energy, the research team opted to use metal complexes: molecules whose structures can be flexibly designed. It discovered that a molybdenum-based “spin-flip” emitter serves as an ideal harvester.
Electrons in such molecules flip their spin during the absorption or emission of near-infrared light. This enables the solar system to accept the triplet energy produced in SF. The researchers suppressed the wasteful FRET process by carefully tuning the energy levels. This allowed the multiplied excitons from the SF to be selectively extracted.
The research team harvested energy by pairing the metal complex with tetracene-based materials in solution, thereby achieving quantum yields of roughly 130%. This means that approximately 1.3 molybdenum-based metal complexes were excited per photon absorbed, indicating that the solar system generated and harvested more energy carriers than photons received.
The team said the discovery will help establish a new design strategy for exciton amplification. However, it noted that the latest tests were at the proof-of-concept stage.
The research team plans to bring the molybdenum-based metal complex “spin-flip” emitter and the tetracene-based materials together in a solid state to enable efficient energy transfer and eventual integration into working solar cells.
Electrons can <a href="https://www.mercomindia.com/electrons-can-move-across-solar-materials-at-record-speed-research" target="_blank" rel="noopener">jump</a> across solar materials in approximately 18 femtoseconds, less than 20 quadrillionths of a second, according to researchers from the University of Cambridge’s St John’s College. The researchers claim that this speed of movement is almost the fastest possible in nature, with charge separation observed within a single molecular vibration.
This March, scientists at the University of California in the U.S. <a href="https://www.mercomindia.com/researchers-modify-organic-molecule-for-solar-energy-storage" target="_blank" rel="noopener">developed</a> a molecular system that can capture, store, and release solar energy without relying on conventional batteries or grid infrastructure, addressing a key limitation in renewable energy deployment.

Spin-Flip Emitter Can Help achieve 130% Light Conversion in Solar Cells

Engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (<a href="https://www.mit.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MIT</a>) and <a href="https://www.kyushu-u.ac.jp/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kyushu University</a> in Japan have demonstrated how light could be used to improve the efficiency of fuel cells, lithium-ion batteries, and other devices based on the movement of charged ions.
According to the study, light can be used to stimulate electrons to make them more conductive. This can have wide-ranging applications in various devices, including solar cells.
But some devices depend on the movement of ions rather than just the electrons. Lithium-ion batteries are a classic example of this, as they depend on the movement of lithium ions during battery charge and discharge.
Similarly, fuel cells depend on the movement of hydrogen and oxygen ions to create electricity.
The study points out that the materials behind the applications based on the movement of ions are ceramics. Ceramics are made of tiny crystalline grains fired at high temperatures to form a dense structure. But the problem arises because these fast-moving ions are blocked at the grain boundaries.
“What we find is that the ionic conductivity — the rate at which the ions can move and, therefore, how efficient the resulting device can be — is often markedly degraded by the fact that the ions get blocked at these grain boundaries,” said Harry L. Tuller, professor of ceramics and electronic materials in Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT.
Using the new method, the engineers demonstrated how light could lower the barriers that ions encounter at the grain boundaries.
To prove their point, the researchers demonstrated the use of light on the movement of oxygen ions through a solid electrolyte of ceria and gadolinium.
Speaking on this latest development, William Chueh, associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University, said, “While the movement of electrons under the illumination of light is extensively studied, the movement of ions is only now receiving attention. The work by Tuller and colleagues demonstrates that illuminating materials for fuel cells, electrolyzers, and batteries can substantially lower the bottleneck on ion movement.”
The work could have wide-ranging applications, including boosting the performance of lithium battery electrolytes by increasing their charging rate.
The researchers stated that some devices based on ionic conductivity, like solid oxide fuel cells, must be operated at very high temperatures (about 700 degrees Celsius) for the ions to overcome and move across the grain boundary barriers. And high temperatures, in turn, bring their own problems.
“Our dream was to see if we could overcome the barriers using something that doesn’t require heat. Could we get the same conductivities with another tool? That tool turned out to be light, which had not been tested in this context before.” said Defferriere, a graduate student at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT.
The work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the U.S. National Science Foundation, and Equinor.
Last December, researchers from MIT <a href="https://mercomindia.com/new-novel-electrode-material-energy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> that they had developed a novel electrode material that they believed could be integrated into a semi-solid battery to store renewable energy cost-effectively.
Earlier, researchers from Helmholtz Institute Ulm and Cheongju University had <a href="https://mercomindia.com/researchers-claim-energy-density-lithium-battery/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">developed</a> a new lithium-metal battery that claimed to offer an extremely high energy density of 560 watt-hours per kilogram with remarkably good stability.

Light Can Act as an Efficiency Booster for Lithium-ion Batteries

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