Making Solar Cells with Pure Pyrite
Cyrus Wadia is using abundant materials to grow nanocrystals for cheaper photovoltaics.
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Cyrus Wadia makes pure pyrite nanocrystals in his lab at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Iron salts are mixed with sulfide salts inside the metal autoclave container at left and heated in an oven for four hours.
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The result: a black suspension of pyrite nanocrystals.
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Wadia sets a glass chip on the circular pedestal in the center of a spin-coating machine and then drips the pyrite suspension onto it. A minute of spinning coats the chip with a thin film of pyrite.
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He uses tweezers to set the chip on a hot plate; 10 to 15 minutes of heat will fix the nanocrystals to the surface.
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Wadia places a glass chip with eight pyrite solar cells on its surface inside a solar simulator. The aluminum lines are the cells’ top electrical contacts; the line across the top of the chip is a strip of conductive indium tin oxide.
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Inside the solar simulator, the chip is illuminated with light in a mixture of wavelengths simulating the distribution found in sunlight. Electrical connections to the manifold read the current and voltage across each cell, helping Wadia to calculate its efficiency.
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