{"id":15236,"date":"2018-05-25T05:44:45","date_gmt":"2018-05-25T05:44:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=15236"},"modified":"2020-06-09T12:58:59","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T12:58:59","slug":"tomorrows-solar-cells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/tomorrows-solar-cells\/","title":{"rendered":"Tomorrows solar cells"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"ESA–<\/strong> Solar cells have a hard life in space \u2013 their efficiency at converting sunlight into energy at the end of their time there is more prized than their initial efficiency. This next generation solar cell having an area of around 30\u00a0sq. cm boosts the beginning of life efficiency of up to 30.9% and end of life efficiency to 27.5% – and in the future designers expect to push this figure above 30%.<\/span><\/p>\n

Developed for ESA by a consortium led by German solar cell manufacturer\u00a0Azur Space<\/a>,\u00a0CESI in Italy<\/a>, Germany\u2019s\u00a0Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems<\/a>,\u00a0Qioptiq<\/a>\u00a0in the UK,\u00a0Umicore<\/a>\u00a0in Belgium,\u00a0tf2 devices<\/a>\u00a0in the Netherlands, and Finland\u2019s\u00a0Tampere University of Technology<\/a>, this design is a \u2018four-junction\u2019 0.1 mm-thick device containing four layers of different materials (AlGaInP<\/a>,\u00a0AlGaInAs<\/a>,\u00a0GaInAs<\/a>,Ge<\/a>) to absorb separate wavelengths of sunlight.<\/span><\/p>\n

This design was originated through ESA\u2019s\u00a0Technology Research Programme<\/a>\u00a0with further development and qualification testing supported through the Agency\u2019s\u00a0ARTES<\/a>, Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems, programme. It is currently intended to fly with ESA\u2019s next generation\u00a0Neosat<\/a>\u00a0telecom satellites.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Solar cells have a hard life in space \u2013 their efficiency at converting sunlight into energy at the end of their time there is more prized than their initial efficiency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/esa_revo.jpg",625,352,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/esa_revo-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/esa_revo-300x169.jpg",300,169,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/esa_revo.jpg",625,352,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/esa_revo.jpg",625,352,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/esa_revo.jpg",625,352,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/esa_revo.jpg",625,352,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/esa_revo.jpg",625,352,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/esa_revo.jpg",625,352,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/esa_revo.jpg",600,338,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/esa_revo.jpg",600,338,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/esa_revo.jpg",625,352,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/esa_revo.jpg",550,310,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/esa_revo.jpg",95,54,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/esa_revo.jpg",625,352,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/esa_revo.jpg",96,54,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/esa_revo.jpg",150,84,false]},"author_info":{"info":["RevoScience"]},"category_info":"Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}