Project description
Higher efficiency for silicon solar cells
Renewable energy is crucial for the EU to meet its climate goals and remain a global leader in clean energy. Photovoltaic (PV) technology, especially silicon-based solar panels, plays a big role in this effort. However, silicon solar cells lose some energy through a process called thermalisation, whereby excess photon energy is wasted. This limits their overall efficiency. Funded by the European Innovation Council, the BioSinFin project will develop a bioinspired coating that improves silicon solar cell efficiency. Using a process called singlet fission, the coating generates more energy from sunlight. This breakthrough could increase the power output of silicon panels by 25 %, making them more efficient while helping the EU reach its renewable energy targets.
Objective
The European Union (EU) Revised Renewable Energy Directive 2023/2413/EU states the need of advancing renewable energy sources
to meet the commitments of the Paris Agreement while keeping the EU a global leader in renewables. Among the existing renewable
energy technologies, photovoltaics are one of the most mature, promising to reach a worldwide production of 8,519 GW by 2050.
Silicon-PVs (Si-PVs) are the most advanced approach to reach the above goal at low costs. However, they still face the problem of
thermalization, an energy loss mechanism by which the excess energy of the absorbed photons with respect to the Si band gap is
lost. BioSinFin will tackle this issue developing the first bioinspired photomultiplier coating based on singlet fission, a multiple exciton
generation process. Here, singlet-fission active chromophores and red-emitting materials are bioconjugated to protein scaffolds with
nm precision and used to fabricate a coating to sensitize Si solar cells promising up to an additional 5% to the absolute power
conversion efficiency of commercial Si PVs (i.e. about 25% improvement) using a low-cost and sustainable coating, leading a revalue
of Si-PV market of up to 15%. This multi-photon protein family and its respective coatings will allow to realize a low-cost, sustainable, environmentally friendly, and highly performing new generation of multi-photon low-energy bio-hybrid emitters of great interest for photonics with a final proof on overcoming thermalization in silicon solar cells, helping the EU to fulfil the Revised Renewable Energy
Directive.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteins
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcoating and films
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrymetalloids
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsrenewable energysolar energyphotovoltaic
- natural sciencesphysical sciencestheoretical physicsparticle physicsphotons
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.3.1 - The European Innovation Council (EIC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-EIC - HORIZON EIC GrantsCoordinator
80333 Muenchen
Germany