Researchers have achieved solar energy conversion at an efficiency of 130 percent, exceeding the theoretical limit of 100 percent. The method is based on a process called singlet fission, where a single photon can produce two energy carriers instead of one.
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Solar cells today convert only about one-third of the sunlight that hits them. This is because photons in light either have too little or too much energy to be used optimally. Infrared photons are too weak to activate electrons, while blue light loses its excess energy as heat. This limitation is known as the Shockley-Queisser limit and has long been considered difficult to overcome.
Now researchers at Kyushu University in Japan, in collaboration with Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, have developed a method that gets past that limit.
Normally, each photon produces a single energy carrier, called an exciton. With singlet fission, that exciton can instead split into two, theoretically doubling the available energy.
The process has long been considered promising but difficult to exploit in practice. The problem is that energy is easily “stolen” by a competing mechanism called Förster resonance energy transfer, abbreviated FRET, before it has time to multiply.
The solution was a metal complex based on the element molybdenum. It functions as a so-called “spin-flip” emitter, meaning an electron changes its spin when absorbing or emitting near-infrared light. This allows it to selectively capture the triplet excitons produced during singlet fission — without being disrupted by FRET.
By carefully tuning the energy levels in the system, the research team was able to minimize energy losses and efficiently harvest the multiplied excitons.
When the molybdenum-based complex was combined with a tetracene-based material, the system achieved a quantum yield of approximately 130 percent. This means that roughly 1.3 molybdenum complexes were activated for every photon absorbed — more energy carriers were produced than photons coming in.
The collaboration between the two universities was crucial. Adrian Sauer, a doctoral student at JGU Mainz who was on exchange at Kyushu University, drew the team’s attention to a material that had long been studied at his home university. That led to the combination of materials that ultimately proved to work.
The research is still at an early stage. The experiments were conducted in solution, and the next step is to integrate the materials into solid-state systems to improve energy transfer and move closer to practical solar cell applications.
Beyond solar energy, the research team sees potential uses in LEDs and quantum technology.
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