Community | November 11, 2009 | 9 comments

Fool's Gold a Golden Opportunity for Solar

source: http://news.discovery.com/tech/fools-gold-solar-power.html

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DeliaTheArtist
"Fool's gold, or pyrite, could be a real gold mine for the solar panel industry.

Scientists from the University of California, Berkeley and Switzerland-based NLV Solar are developing solar cells based on one of the most widely available minerals on the planet, pyrite, that could one day be as efficient as today's popular silicon panels, but much thinner and much cheaper.

The best cells can only convert about 3 percent of the light that strikes them into electricity, a number that hasn't changed much since the 1980s. Indium tin oxide, silicon, gallium arsenides and other materials used in solar panels can achieve many times that efficiency.

Instead of focusing on technical accomplishments Wadia looked at the environmental availability of 23 different materials in the Earth's crust. While silicon, a major component of beach sand, might seem limitless, pyrite is much more common -- four to five orders more common in fact.

"We can't change the geology of the Earth, so we might as well go after the materials that is most abundant," said Wadia. "We can barely put solar power in the hands of one million, let alone six billion."

Wadia isn't the only scientist looking at pyrite based photovoltaics. NLV Solar and Swedish car maker Koenigsegg recently built a solar-electric concept car known as the Quant, which used pyrite-based solar cells.

With multiple layers of solar cells, NLV boasted that their Pyradian photovoltaic cell can convert 50 percent of all the light that strikes them into electricity. Being a concept car, it is unlikely that it will be available for consumer purchase anytime soon.

Other scientists have also noticed pyrite's potential. "It's absorption coefficient is very high, and it requires very little material to absorb a lot sunlight," said Joseph Luther, a research scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado. "What might take 300 microns of silicon to absorb might only take 20 nanometers of pyrite."

http://news.discovery.com/tech/fools-gold-solar-power.html
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9 comments // Fool's Gold a Golden Opportunity for Solar

  • Vierotchka
  • ColossalView
  • RENGACORP
  • royulery
    • 0
      royulery  

    • delia; i'm a little confused about the 3% conversion rate and the high absorption coefficient.

      none the less. this is gold from straw.

    • 2 years ago
  • profod
    • 0
      profod  
    • royulery:

      hey royulery i was confused too, this is from the article, hope it answers your question:

      "While all pyrite shares the same chemical formula, its physical structure, or phase, can vary. Unless the entire cell is the same phase, it can only achieve the 3 percent efficiency that has been reported for over 25 years. Even slight variations dramatically reduce its ability to convert sunlight into electricity.

      Wadia thinks he has solved this problem by using nanocrystals... "

    • 2 years ago
  • royulery
    • 0
      royulery  

    • rengacorp; yea you could have tasted copper, i think it's mostly iron and sulfur but it can have anything in it. i don't remember pyrite being that plentiful, from geology class. i thought aluminum silicates were the plentiful continental rocks, the ones that made the land masses float on top of heavy magma.

    • 2 years ago
  • pjacobs51
    • 0
      pjacobs51  

    • These guys are thinking! Find one of the most widely available minerals on the planet and develop an "in demand" product out of that mineral. Ka-ching!

    • 2 years ago
  • RENGACORP
    • 0
      RENGACORP  

    • I knew it was worth something. Now if only I could go back in time and find that white bucket full of my collection. Remember tasting the copper content of rocks? Or was that just me?

    • 2 years ago
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