High-purity silicon accounts for 40% of the total cost of traditional solar arrays, so researchers have long sought ways to maximize solar cell output while reducing silicon usage. Now, the MIT research team has found a new way to reduce the thickness of silicon, which can be as thin as 90% on the basis of maintaining the efficiency of the battery, thereby reducing the manufacturing cost of thin-film solar cells. The relevant research report was published in the recently published "Nano Express" magazine. Researchers at the school's mechanical engineering department said that the secret of this approach lies in the etching of miniature inverted pyramid patterns on the surface of silicon. They used two overlapping laser beams in order to generate special micro-scratches on the surface of the photoresist deposited on the silicon. After several intermediate steps, the potassium hydroxide dissolves the portion of the surface that is not covered by the photoresist, creating a desired pyramid pattern on the surface of the material. These tiny nicks, each less than a millionth of a meter, can capture light as effectively as a solid silicon surface 30 times thicker. This new method that can effectively improve the performance of thin-film solar cells is expected to act on any silicon-based battery. Scientists said that if it can significantly reduce the amount of silicon in solar cells, it can significantly reduce the cost of battery production. The problem is that when the battery is built thin, its ability to absorb sunlight will decrease. However, the new method can overcome this problem. The surface nicks referred to by the research team as "reversed nano-pyramids" can greatly increase the amount of light absorbed, and the surface area can only increase by 70%, thus limiting the occurrence of surface recombination. Surface recombination refers to the disappearance of semiconductor minority carriers on the surface. The semiconductor surface has a very strong role of complex minority carriers, and it also makes the semiconductor surface sensitive to external factors, which is also the root cause of the semiconductor device performance is greatly affected by the surface. The 10 μm-thick crystalline silicon obtained based on the new method can achieve approximately the same light absorption as a 30-fold thick conventional silicon wafer. This can not only reduce the amount of expensive high-purity silicon in the solar cell, but also reduce the weight of the battery, and thus save the required battery materials, effectively reducing the material cost and installation cost of the thin-film solar cell. In addition, the equipment and materials used by the new technology are also standard parts for the existing silicon chip processing, so there is no need to update the manufacturing equipment, so that the difficulty of manufacturing is greatly reduced, and it is easier to implement and operate. So far, the research team has only carried out the first step in manufacturing a new type of solar cell, which is based on a silicon wafer to produce a patterned surface, and using the trapped light to confirm its performance improvement, the next step is to add components to produce real Photovoltaic cells, and prove its energy efficiency can be comparable with traditional solar cells. The conversion efficiency of today's best commercial silicon-based solar cells is 24%, and scientists expect the new approach to achieve energy conversion efficiencies of about 20%, but this still needs further experiments to test. If all goes well, the new system can be commercialized in the near future to produce more economical thin-film solar cells, and the ultra-thin design will also make its application more extensive. (Zhang Hao) Mattress Felt,Waterproof Mattress Felt,Custom Mattress Felt,Light Weight Mattress Felt Suzhou Surface Protective New Material Technology Co.,Ltd , https://www.surfaceprotective.com