In a study published in Nature, researchers at Linköping University have developed a method to recycle all parts of a solar cell repeatedly without environmentally hazardous solvents.
In a study published in Nature, researchers at Linköping University have developed a method to recycle all parts of a solar cell repeatedly without environmentally hazardous solvents. The recycled solar cell has the same efficiency as the original one. The solar cell is made of perovskite and the main solvent is water.
Electricity use is expected to increase drastically in the coming years with the development of AI and the transition to electrified transport, among other things. In order for the change to not drive climate change, different sustainable energy sources need to work together.
Solar energy has long been considered to have great potential and solar panels based on silicon have been on the market for over 30 years. But first-generation silicon solar panels are at the end of their life cycle, which has created an unexpected problem.
“There is currently no efficient technology to deal with the waste of silicon panels. That’s why old solar panels end up in the landfill. Huge mountains of electronic waste that you can’t do anything with,” says Xun Xiao, postdoc at the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM) at Linköping University (LiU).
Read more at Linköping University
Image: One of the most promising technologies for next-generation solar cells involves perovskite. Now researchers at Linköping University have developed a method to recycle all parts of a perovskite solar cell repeatedly using water as the main solvent. (Photographer:Thor Balkhed)
