GERMI researchers develop grapheme technology to reduce solar power cost

Researchers at the Gujarat Energy and Research Management Institute (GERMI) at Ahmedabad have claimed to have developed a simple and economical processing technique for the manufacture of graphene-based solar cells that could help reduce the cost of producing solar power considerably.

"A simple and economical way of processing to fabricate graphene-based solar cell has been developed by our scientists," GERMI director T Harinarayana said.

"Graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice, has many novel properties that attracted researchers around the world. High electrical conductivity (better than copper) and very high (90 per cent) transparency makes graphene an ideal material for fabrication of transparent and current spreading electrodes," GERMI said in a research paper.

Research carried out by Sanjay Behura, Sasmita Nayak and Omkar Jani of GERMI and Indrajit Mukhopadhyay of Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University (PDPU), Gandhinagar has demonstrated the possibility of using graphene as a component of solar cells in place of costlier silicon, reducing manufacture cost of solar cells by 10-15 per cent.

Details of the new research are expected to appear in journal 'Carbon' in February.

In addition to the high cost of silicon, squeezing higher energy efficiencies out of silicon-based solar cells has been a big challenge to developers of solar photovoltaic cells.

The solar cell fabricated using graphene has shown an efficiency of 0.02 per cent, which can be enhanced by optimising the device structure, the paper said.

The simple fabrication technique of graphene can be exploited for other applications also, according to the researchers.

If graphene can be used to produce low-cost solar cells, the cost of setting up such plants will come down substantially, they said.

The scientific breakthrough, researchers say, can give impetus to solar energy, a clean and environment-friendly form of power.