This is the highest number reached by any single-layer plastic, organic photovoltaic solar cell created in the world to date and should greatly help commercial use of power generation using sunlight, Lee said.
Energy efficiency shows the percentage of sunshine that solar cells turn into electricity. Lee’s teams said they used a new material that has open circuit voltage properties and titanium oxide to bring about high efficiency.
Lee added that under so-called green light conditions, the energy efficiency of the new plastic power cells attained 17%, which is more than sufficient to start commercial power generation. Experts said an efficiency rate of 7% must be attained for plastic solar cells to become commercially feasible.
Conventional inorganic silicon-based solar cells used in homes have an efficiency rate of 7% to 8%, while very expensive panels placed on satellites have numbers reaching 15%.
The technology, developed jointly with US researchers led by Alan Heeger of the University of California, Santa Barbara, is an extension of cutting edge research executed out in the past.
The Lee team announced in 2007 that they had built a stacked or double-layered organic photovoltaic that had a power efficiency of 6.5%.
