It is the long-term plan for production and development to develop new types of renewable energy and improve energy utilization. Among them, the development of solar energy has attracted the attention of global researchers. Because solar energy is taken from the sun, it is inexhaustible to humans. However, the conversion efficiency of solar energy into electrical energy or chemical energy has always been criticized. A major bottleneck for technology.
Studying solar cells is inseparable from semiconductors. In general, the more transparent the color, the better the conductivity, and the better the semiconductor performance. We can often see transparent materials in our lives, such as glass, plastic, etc .; there are also many semiconductors such as silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide. However, the only unusual thing is materials that are both transparent and electrically conductive, and the two have not been able to combine perfectly until tin dioxide enters the eyes of scientists. Recently, researchers have discovered that tin dioxide, a material with both transparency and good electrical conductivity, is an excellent semiconductor material.
Mobility is an important indicator to measure the performance of semiconductors, and it is closely related to the moving speed of electrons inside a substance. Tin and oxygen in tin dioxide are combined by ionic bonding. The researchers found that the electron mobility in the tin dioxide film is very high. Such a high mobility allows tin dioxide to have both conductive and transparent properties. Semiconductors are the basis for manufacturing computer chips and solar panels. It is reported that the development of this material will be applied to next-generation LED lamps, photovoltaic solar panels or touch-sensitive display technologies.
In fact, tin dioxide has been used in industry since 1960, including gas sensors and transparent electrodes for solar devices. The high mobility of electrons in tin dioxide makes it an essential material for these applications. For most applications, the higher the mobility of electrons, the better. But the only drawback is that tin dioxide only exhibits such a high electron mobility in bulk crystals, thus having both a transparent state and high conductivity. The researchers said that tin dioxide exhibited the highest mobility in the film. For tin dioxide, increasing the mobility can not only improve the conductivity of the material, but also improve the transparency of the material.
The more transparent the semiconductor, the more light it transmits. Based on this, applying it to solar cells is the most appropriate. Researchers made tin dioxide into a thin film and found that the wavelength band that this thin film can transmit includes visible light and near-infrared light (the main concentrated area of solar energy), which has great benefits for the conversion rate of photovoltaic solar panels. Greatly increased the power of solar panels.
In addition, this transparent tin dioxide material can also be used to enhance touch screen displays (with higher accuracy and response speed) or more efficient LED lights. In the later period, scientists will also consider incorporating other substances into the tin dioxide film, or adding defects, so that this material can also exhibit excellent characteristics in small crystals.