Photon enhanced thermionic emission could double efficiency of solar cells
By Laura June 
posted August 3rd 2010 8:25PM
posted August 3rd 2010 8:25PM
posted August 3rd 2010 8:25PM
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The photon enhanced thermionic emission ARE NOW DIAMONDS!
@Outsider those standford engineers are probably on a horse
@InTheRye
...Riding Backwards
@RhymeMaster ...while each are wearing monocles smiling at one another
Saw the picture and thought it was a new Droid commercial :/
Cesium has a VERY violent reaction when exposed to water...it would explode if a tree fell on it during a storm and rain got in lol
@soaffb1337 good thing you don't see many trees in solar farms
IT'S LOOKING AT ME!!! :/
@loocas
If I looked like you I would be surprised too (jk)
@RhymeMaster :D [+]
Well hot damn!
This is my plan
About time. Green Technology simply can not compete because it costs so much, so they need to become much more efficient.
@Sea Urchin Thank you Captain Obvious, I'm glad you finally explained the mystery.
This is good news for my future 100% solar-powered home... due in 2052!
cool more green power! We need to live, but green!
http://ikejhamb.com
@coolmantv1
Green Spam! The sustainable spam of the future!
Uhhh... nothing too special here. Ever heard of Combined Cycle Power plants? They burn natural gas in a gas turbine and use the waste heat to make steam and run a steam turbine as well. They do hit 50+ % Efficiencies.
This is the same thing except for PV Cells. Light hits the PV Cell, gets absorbed and makes electricity. Of course, nothing is 100% efficient and that energy that isn't converted into electricity is converted into heat.
The problem is, you don't want regular PV cells to heat up because they are less efficient at higher temperatures. The Stanford researchers are using a different 'quantum' method to produce that primary electricity, so that the waste heat can be hot enough to run a steam generator. They took the Combined Cycle Approach to PV rather then the "Let's see what other rare earths we can use to increase our efficiency by .01% route".
I would say they're still smart cookies.
I also want to mention that many Gen IV Nuclear Reactor Concepts are using Helium Brayton cycles so they could do the same thing and hit 50+% Efficiency as well. It's not as if Solar as some special sauce to hit these high efficiencies.
@M3 No, there's no "special sauce" to solar. There's also no radioactive waste.
@Samurai Jack
People forget you can't recycle Solar Panels. Silicon Waste has a half-life of.. that's right infinity.
@M3 I was joking about the radioactive waste. I think small nuclear reactors should be a major component of any comprehensive energy policy. However silicon waste doesn't worry me all that much. Turn it into glass, grind it into sand, whatever. It can be contained much more easily than radioactivity.
@Samurai Jack
The problem with that idea is that these new high efficiency panels contain enough rare earths and other chemicals to be labeled as chemical waste. You can't just dispose of it like glass. Rather it has to be treated like higher level chemical waste.
While Radioactive waste is a problem, the amount we would be producing via a real nuclear build up would still be trivial and with reprocessing it becomes a non-issue technically and environmentally. Only thing stopping reprocessing is our shit for brains congress that things we're still in the middle of the cold war when it comes to nuclear technology.
@M3 The thing about rare earth elements is that they're extremely valuable even in small quantities. So there would be an incentive to extract and reuse them from any spent solar panels. I'm not saying the extraction process will be an easy one though. But I doubt it will be more harmful than nuclear waste reprocessing or long term storage.
I think substantively we agree. A comprehensive energy strategy should involve a variety of solutions, all of which have potential benefits and drawbacks. Mitigating the drawbacks will be an industry in itself. No one technology is going to be able to meet the world's energy needs--at least, not with the technologies we have currently.
one of these would be good to catch all that extra sun radiation goodness from the huge CME headin' our way
The solar hot water systems you see would be great to soak up this heat from the photovoltaics.
Somehow, if the two were combined, we'd have something.
But a breakthrough with battery life (charge / discharge cycles) would be far more useful as far as so-called 'green' power goes.
"photon enhanced thermionic emission"
how does that describe this technology?
@mrqs
With a fancy name of course!
I'm still waiting on some advanced piezoelectric/kinetic generator. Put it on a couple computer desks next to the box of tissues and let the free energy roll on in.
Coated with cesium?
What a great idea. Until it rains. Unless of course what you need really is a highly explosive solar cell.
Fuck, why don't we synthesize some francium and put that on there? It should be more efficient than cesium, and I guess we're not afraid of said elements' reactivity.
@Wbuffet
The Cesium coating is a thermal carrier, so it could very easily be coated with a transparent ceramic with a high melting point.