During the California Gold Rush of 1849, many inexperienced miners hoping to strike it rich by finding the ?mother lode? mistook fool's gold for the real thing.
Today, this glittery, golden metal, also known as iron pyrite, is catching the eye of solar energy scientists, who see in it the potential to change the way solar energy is harvested.
The Holy Grail of solar energy has long been cheaper resources, from the glass that covers the solar panels to the rare earth minerals (indium, gallium), and increasingly more scarce metals like copper, used to fabricate thin-film solar cells. Iron pyrite is one of the most extensive, and accessible, metals on earth.
Cheaper resources means cheaper manufacture, which means cheaper panels, faster uptake of solar technology and eventually, a ubiquitous renewable energy infrastructure to take this nation off its dirty coal habit.
Researchers at UC Irvine say a prototype made from iron pyrite could be ready within a year, though it would be closer to three before the cells can be mass-produced in a factory setting.
The best part of that news? The solar cells could function at roughly the same efficiencies as existing technology. If the team, led by Matt Lew, is referring to CIGS (copper, indium, gallium, selenide), a direct bandgap material, that would be fantastic, since the NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) has verified a 19.9-percent efficiency with a thin-film hybrid.
The highest rating achieved by a crystalline silicon solar cell to date (and also verified by NREL) is 40.9 percent ? or well beyond the theoretical threshold of 33 percent (CIGS cells are capped at about 30 percent).
Industry analysts are reportedly pooh-poohing the likelihood of iron pyrite as a stand-in for CIGS, but it?s easy to rain on someone else?s parade, harder to walk the walk down that long and often lonely road.
Shoulders back, Matt and team. You are following in the footsteps of such greats as Heike Onnes (superconductors), Max Planck (the behavior of subatomic particles), and the team of Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen, who discovered and identified the specific wavelengths at which individual elements absorb light.
Photo Credit: Richard Faulder via Flickr CC
Source: http://solar.calfinder.com/blog/solar-research/solar-secret-fools-gold/
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