SOLAR power is set for a boost with the help of a material that can soak up energy from almost all of the Sun’s spectrum. It should allow solar cells to jump in efficiency from today’s best of 30 per cent to 50 per cent or higher.
Solar cells use layers of semiconductors to absorb photons of sunlight and convert them into electric current. But each different semiconductor can only use photons at a specific energy – its “bandgap”.
Today’s best cells have layers of two different semiconductors stacked together to absorb light at different energies but they still only manage to use 30 per cent of…
