Floating robots in the ocean oscillate hundreds of times between the surface and the deep ocean where pressure may exceed 60 MPa. It would be nice if we could recharge their batteries while floating at the surface, but what kind of solar cell might resist repeated excursions to such high pressures. If they do not exist, is there a photovoltaic research group interested to collaborate in a project to monitor the ocean environment by developing pressure resistant solar cells?
Hi Guust, that's a great question. I'll ask some colleagues, they are likely interested in testing this.
Dear Dr. Guust Nolet ,
a solar panel is made up of many silicon solar cells that are all interconnected. While the panels themselves are very durable, the silicon solar cells are made of very thin wafers, usually around 0.20mm thick. Although they have some ability to flex, they can suffer from pressure/stress-induced cracks that are so small they are impossible to see with the naked eye. These are known as micro cracks and are one of the main sources of malfunctioning or even inactive cells. Micro cracks are nearly impossible to avoid and how your panels react to these cracks is very important.
For more details, please see the source:
-Can Solar Panels Break? By Positive Energy Solar (2017)
Available at: https://www.positiveenergysolar.com/blog/2017/may/can-solar-panels-break-/
I suggest you also to have a look at the following paper:
-Effect of Pressing Pressure on the Performance of Perovskite Solar Cells
Lei Shi, Meng Zhang,Yongyoon Cho, Trevor L. Young, Dian Wang, Haimang Yi, Jincheol Kim, Shujuan Huang, and Anita W. Y. Ho-Baillie
ACS Applied Energy Materials, 2(4) (2019)
Available, as full text, on RG at: ttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/331884746_The_Effect_of_Pressing_Pressure_on_the_Performance_of_Perovskite_Solar_Cells
My best regards, Pierluigi Traverso.
Metal halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have undergone remarkably rapid progress with their power conversion efficiency (PCE) increasing from 3.8% to 23.7% in merely 9 years. Although an enormous research effort has been devoted to performance improvement, there has been little investigation of the effect of postfabrication processes such as encapsulation or packaging on device PCE. In this work, the effect of pressing on the performance of mesoporous PSCs is studied. Cells with the state-of-the-art architecture glass/FTO/c-TiO2/mp-TiO2/perovskite/ spiro-OMeTAD/gold are used in this study. It is found that pressing under the condition typically used for encapsulation is beneficial for these PSCs, improving their PCE consistently by more than 7% relative on average. The effect of pressing was characterized by light current density− voltage measurement (LJV) time-resolved photoluminescence (TR-PL), Xray diffraction (XRD), and electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The PCE enhancement is due to an improved interface resulting in a higher fill factor, lower recombination, and lower hysteresis. It is found that pressing pressure of 400−500 mbar is appropriate; higher pressure at 1000 mbar is detrimental. Moreover, pressure must be maintained to maintain the PCE improvement. Pressing is an essential part of an encapsulation process, and this work demonstrates the beneficial effect of pressing on PSCs, inspiring future development of encapsulation and packaging.
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