中国科技网9月10日报道（张微 编译）马里兰大学电气和计算机工程系助理教授杰瑞米 芒迪和研究生Yunlu Xu 以及Tao Gong设计了一种新型的纳米太阳能电池，他们预计这种电池比传统设备的效率胜出40%。这项新技术通过小型单个设备就可以产生更多的电力，可以彻底改变太阳能产业。

Xu, Gong,和芒迪将他们关于纳米结构太阳能电池的肖克利·奎伊瑟效率极限的研究发表在《科学报告》期刊上，这是自然出版社的一个在线的，可公开获取的期刊。这个期刊发表自然和临床科学所有领域里有科学依据的基础研究成果。

肖克利·奎伊瑟效率极限是指一个特定材料可实现的太阳能转换效率极限，也是与新型光伏技术对比的标准。对于一个标准太阳能电池来说，效率极限是～33%。不过，最近人们想知道，纳米太阳能电池是否也受到这个极限的约束。

现在，Xu, Gong,和芒迪已经证实一个单结纳米结构太阳能电池，在典型太阳光照下，最大理论效率是～42%。这超越了传统平面器件的效率，但是没有超过平面器件在聚光情况下(如利用镜头集中太阳光的太阳能电池)的肖克利·奎伊瑟效率极限。研究人员发现，纳米结构太阳能电池，通过“内置聚光”为制造高效光伏设备提供了一个重要路径。即使当研究人员考虑大气中光线散射效果时，纳米结构太阳能电池通过～1,000的适度内置聚光，也能够实现35.5%的效率。

当芒迪和他的团队设计和制造纳米太阳能电池过程中，他们发现最大的挑战来自纳米加工技术。“一开始你设计一个运转良好的太阳能电池，然后你开始在纳米尺度上进行一些大的结构性改造，所有这些动作都没有造成损失，”芒迪说。“幸运的是，我们现在已经找到了一些有希望的材料和工艺，而且还有热衷于此领域的一个团队的学生，有望在太阳能技术领域大展拳脚。”

英文原文： 

New nanoscale solar cells could revolutionize solar industry

University of Maryland Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Assistant Professor Jeremy Munday and graduate students Yunlu Xu and Tao Gong have designed a new type of nanoscale solar cell that they predict could outperform traditional devices by as much as 40 percent. This new technology could revolutionize the solar industry by allowing for significantly more power generation from a single device by simply making it much smaller.

Xu, Gong, and Munday had their research on the Shockley-Queisser limit for nanostructured solar cells published in Scientific Reports, an online, open access journal from the publishers of Nature. The journal publishes scientifically valid primary research from all areas of the natural and clinical sciences.

The Shockley-Queisser limit describes the maximum solar energy conversion efficiency achievable for a particular material and is the standard of comparison for new photovoltaic technologies. For a standard solar cell, this efficiency limit is ~33 percent. However, recently people have wondered if nanoscale solar cells are also bounded by this limit.

Now Xu, Gong, and Munday have shown that a single-junction nanostructured solar cell has a theoretical maximum efficiency of ~42 percent under typical solar illumination. This exceeds the efficiency of a traditional planar device but does not exceed the Shockley-Queisser limit for a planar device with optical concentration, e.g. a solar cell using a lens to concentrate the light. The researchers found that nanostructured solar cells offer an important avenue to achieving high efficiency photovoltaic devices through a "built-in optical concentration." Even when they consider the effects of light scattering in the atmosphere, nanostructured solar cells can achieve 35.5 percent efficiency with a modest built-in optical concentration of only ~1,000.

As Munday and his team continue to design and fabricate nanoscale solar cells they find the biggest challenge is nano-fabrication. "You start with a solar cell that works well, and then you perform some extreme treatments to structure it on the nanoscale, all without causing any harming," said Munday. "Luckily, we've found a few materials and processes that look promising and have a team of dedicated students determined to make a big impact in solar energy."

（来源：中国科技网）