Abstract
We report a photoelectrochemical solar cell (PEC) with in situ storage, operating at 11.3% overall solar to electrical conversion efficiency, with a generated power insensitive to daily fluctuations in solar radiation. A primary advantage of PECs, compared to photovoltaic solar cells, had been their proposed capacity for in situ storage by the addition of a single electrochemical half cell1. Several systems combining photoelectrochemical conversion with electrochemical storage have been presented with maximum efficiencies of approximately 3 per cent. A series of polysulphide solution effects2–5 resulted in a high efficiency caesium polysulphide n-Cd(Se,Te) single crystal PEC6. As will be shown, this leads to an autonomous cell with sufficient voltage to bypass the previous necessity for bipolar dual photoelectrode storage, allowing single photoelectrode induced electrochemical storage, with a high continuous output.
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Licht, S., Hodes, G., Tenne, R. et al. A light-variation insensitive high efficiency solar cell. Nature 326, 863–864 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1038/326863a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/326863a0
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