The solar cell that moonlights as an LED, and does both better
CU Boulder Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI)—Imagine a display that harvests ambient light when it is not actively in use, offsetting some of its own energy consumption. The materials physics shows that this is possible; the same semiconductor material can, in principle, emit and absorb light efficiently.
What has been missing is a device architecture that allows it to do both without reductions in efficiency of either application. A new study reports a perovskite diode that converts sunlight to electricity at 26.7% efficiency (a world record at the time of publication submission) and emits light at 31% efficiency, figures that would be high for a device designed to do only one of those things.
What could you do with a CU technology?
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