Think those flat, glassy solar panels on your neighbour’s roof are the pinnacle of solar technology? Think again.

Treating cadmium-telluride (CdTe) solar cell materials with cadmium-chloride improves their efficiency, but researchers have not fully understood why. Now, an atomic-scale examination of the thin-film solar cells led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has answered this decades-long debate about the materials’ photovoltaic efficiency increase after treatment.

Surface modification allows cell to absorb more light.

A new theoretical model developed by professors at the University of Houston (UH) and Université de Montréal may hold the key to methods for developing better materials for solar cells.

Record power-conversion efficiency at Los Alamos from quantum-dot sensitized photovoltaics.

Looking for better materials for solar cells, LEDs, and other technology, one molecule at a time