Strategies for improving light-harvesting efficiencies of photo-batteries

提高光电池光收集效率的策略

• 批准号: 2626206
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Cambridge
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2626206
• 关键词: Strategies; improving; light; harvesting; efficiencies

Photo-batteries are a new solution for harvesting and storing solar energy, where the same electrode material simultaneously harvests sun light and stores it. These devices have only recently gained traction and are therefore poorly optimised both from a solar cell and a battery design perspective. As a result, these devices show limited energy conversion efficiencies, capacities, and cycle life. Nevertheless, these materials are extremely promising for powering off-grid sensors and other autonomous devices as well as to provide energy solutions for rural communities in developing countries. Till now, these photo-batteries have been considered primarily from the viewpoint of charge storage, but not from the angle of light-harvesting which is one of the reasons for their low efficiencies (less than 1%). This project will fundamentally revisit how the photo-batteries are designed by building on the midi-project by drawing inspiration from solar cells and concepts developed by the nanotech community in photo-catalysis and photodetectors. Dye-sensitized solar cells are of particular interest, because of they have an anode, cathode, and electrolyte, just like a battery - so design cues from this class of solar cells will be useful for developing photo-batteries. In addition, dye-sensitized solar cells also provide a solution for creating thick electrodes with a large surface area, which is important for both the battery and solar cell operation. Finally, some of the materials used in dye-sensitized solar cells such a sintered TiO2 and ZnO nanoparticles are used as active anode materials in Li-Ion batteries. Because of the synergies between dye-sensitized solar cells and Li-Ion battery anodes, we anticipate that photo-batteries building on design rules for dye-sensitized solar cells will achieve better energy conversion efficiencies, which is currently the most important draw-back of Li-Ion photo-batteries.

光电池是一种收集和储存太阳能的新解决方案，其中相同的电极材料同时收集太阳光并将其储存。这些设备最近才获得关注，因此从太阳能电池和电池设计的角度来看都没有得到很好的优化。因此，这些装置显示出有限的能量转换效率、容量和循环寿命。尽管如此，这些材料在为离网传感器和其他自主设备供电以及为发展中国家的农村社区提供能源解决方案方面极具前景。到目前为止，这些光电池主要是从电荷存储的角度考虑的，而不是从光捕获的角度考虑的，这是其效率低（小于1%）的原因之一。这个项目将从根本上重新审视光电池是如何设计的，通过借鉴太阳能电池和纳米技术社区在光催化和光电探测器方面开发的概念来建立midi项目。染料敏化太阳能电池特别令人感兴趣，因为它们有阳极，阴极和电解质，就像电池一样-因此这类太阳能电池的设计线索将有助于开发光电池。此外，染料敏化太阳能电池还提供了一种用于产生具有大表面积的厚电极的解决方案，这对于电池和太阳能电池操作都很重要。最后，染料敏化太阳能电池中使用的一些材料，如烧结的TiO 2和ZnO纳米颗粒，被用作锂离子电池的活性阳极材料。由于染料敏化太阳能电池和锂离子电池阳极之间的协同作用，我们预计基于染料敏化太阳能电池设计规则的光电池将实现更好的能量转换效率，这是目前锂离子光电池最重要的缺点。