2023-08-26 11:34:03
Tandem solar panels are constantly evolving and becoming more and more efficient along with it. During the development process of these solar cells, they look for the perfect materials that they can layer on top of each other to increase their efficiency. One of the minerals used for layering is perovskite, the production of which is not as simple as one might think at first. The number of possible perovskite materials is enormous, and it is very difficult to predict what properties a given chemical composition will have. With the help of ink and printing, the mineral becomes so thin that it can be used for solar cells. Such a difficult-to-produce substance is clearly an inherent part of expensive and time-consuming laboratory experiments. A group of scientists recently discovered how to find the ideal raw material for solar cells more efficiently. Researchers at North Carolina State University are using a robot to find the materials needed to make solar cells, which is 14 times faster than the previously used method. “Every time we develop this technology, we have to deal with material variations. So we need to create new materials and then examine them. Anyone who studies the materials is constantly doing repetitive, very labor-intensive work with them.” said Aram Amassian, a professor at the university. To reduce said work, Amassian’s team built a robot called RoboMapper. The device consists of two main parts. One is the ink-making robot, which tries to form perovskite by proportionally combining chemical substances. The other part is the printing robot, which applies these inks to a single substrate in a grid pattern. RoboMapper at work. Source: arstechnika.com The ability to place hundreds of tiny samples on a single chip, which is impossible with human dexterity, allows scientists to examine these samples simultaneously. According to the researchers, this speeds up the production of materials by 14 times compared to the manual method and nine times compared to other automated methods. A wealth of new possibilities The innovation represents a significant step towards the further development of this technology. Amassian’s team only looked at the perovskite itself and did not combine it with silicon or any other support to create tandem cells. However, the researchers are also testing other possible mixtures with their accelerated device and are quickly finding new possibilities that look promising. Furthermore, the approach is not limited to perovskites or solar applications and is already being used in other areas. “We need more data to train machine learning and artificial intelligence models. We designed RoboMapper to be very flexible, modular and extensible.” Amassian said.
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