Scientists at the Nanyang Technological Institute have developed a next-generation solar panel that can absorb sunlight during the day and generate electricity and by night, they can be used as display panels. This two-way glass is created from Perovskite, a material that could hold the main key to creating a high-efficiency and inexpensive solar cell. The new cell can glow when electricity passes through it, and also can emit different colours when customised.
The new technology can possibly make high-rise buildings and towers a large display panel, if these glasses can be used as windows. The glass panels can be used to generate electricity during the day and can be reverted during the night to form large display panels for advertisements or even as a light source.
Assistant Professor Sum said to the team’s surprise, the new Perovskite solar cell glowed brightly when a laser beam was shone on it. This is a significant finding as most solar cell materials are good at absorbing light but are generally not expected to generate light. In fact, this highly luminescent new perovskite material is also very suitable for the making of lasers. “What we have discovered is that because it is a high-quality material, and very durable under light exposure, it can capture light particles and convert them to electricity, or vice versa,” said Asst Prof Sum, a Singaporean scientist at NTU’s School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (SPMS).
“By tuning the composition of the material, we can make it emit a wide range of colours, which also makes it suitable as a light emitting device, such as flat screen displays.” “Such a versatile yet low-cost material would be a boon for green buildings. Since we are already working on the scaling up of these materials for large-scale solar cells, it is pretty straightforward to modify the procedures to fabricate light-emitting devices as well. More significantly, the ability of this material to lase, has implications for on-chip electronic devices that source, detect and control light,” he added.
This NTU breakthrough has already won praise from experts. Professor Ramamoorthy Ramesh, the Purnendu Chatterjee Endowed Chair in Energy Technologies professor at the University of California, Berkeley in the United States said: “This work from the NTU SinBeRISE team clearly shows the promise of such new materials in a broad range of applications, including solar cells and now for lasing. It also shows the power of interdisciplinary, basic science in making fundamental discoveries that will impact in a broad sense.”
