Photovoltaic conversion

Nanosized functional materials made of semiconductors promise the prospect of application in many high-technique fields such as photovoltaic conversion and energy storage because of their characteristics of surface structure and high surface area [318-322],... 

For reasons mentioned above, biomass conversion will for the time being show the main growth of the renewables. Flowever, for the longer term, photovoltaics conversion technology is the more attractive option. 

However, there are many challenges to exploiting direct conversion of solar energy into electricity and/or chemical fuels. For a comprehensive review of the basic research challenges in the photovoltaic conversion of solar energy see Refs. [2, 3, 9]. 

Although photovoltaic conversion is nonpolluting, environmental, health, and safety aspects must be considered, especially with regard to harmful emission and waste products resulting from the production of the solar cell modules. It has been shown that, with proper encapsulation and a proactive recycling program, it should be possible to minimize environmental concerns. 

P. A. lies, Workshop Proceedings on Photovoltaic Conversion of Solar Energy and Terrestrial Application, Cherry Hill, October 1973, p. 71. 

Flywheel Energy Storage Systems Photovoltaic Conversion Systems... 

Photoelectrocatalysis transforms the possibilities of using photoelectrochemistry in practical situations. For example, it increases the efficiency of conversion of light to hydrogen by more than one order of magnitude and brings it to values competitive with those of photovoltaic conversions of light to electricity (see Section 10.7.1.). 

Semiconductors have proven to be very important factors in the photovoltaic conversion of solar radiation into electric energy. They can also be used as photoelectrodes in photoelectrochemical cells producing power or fuels, and in photocatalytic reactions of high specificity, though these applications are still at the experimental stage. 

G. Yu, AJ. Heeger, Charge separation and photovoltaic conversion in polymer composites with internal donor/acceptor heterojunctions, J. Appl. Phys. 78 (1995) 4510 1515. 

Fig. 11. Solar spectral distributions and the various regions of spectral sensitivity for vision, plant photosynthesis, and photovoltaic conversion technologies.

Fig. 10. Energy conversion efficiency of solar-driven water splitting to generate H2 as a function of temperature and photovoltaic conversion efficiency at AMI.5 insolation, at pfhO = 1 bar. Reprinted with permission from J. Phys. Chem. 52003, 107, 4253-4260. Copyright 2003...

Rincon M. E., Jimenez A., Orihuela A. and Martinez G. (2001), Thermal treatment effects in the photovoltaic conversion of spray-painted TiOa coatings sensitised by chemically deposited CdSe thin films . Solar Energy Mat. Solar Cells 70, 163-173. 

Basic principles of photovoltaic conversion in organic materials... 

The expected efficiency of photovoltaic conversion is strongly dependent on the dark conductivity, on the processes of carrier photogeneration, on the kinetics of excitons and charge carriers, and can be estimated only in the framework of a complete theory which properly takes into account also the structure of the heterojunction. 

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