Although solar power technology is on the rise and scientists hope to use this clean, renewable energy source much more in the future, one of its biggest downsides is the fact that it cannot product energy when it's raining. Now, a team of Chinese researchers might have developed a solution to this problem: an all-weather solar panel that creates power using both sunlight and raindrops.
The team - comprised of researchers from Ocean University and Yunnan Normal University - created an extremely efficient dye-sensitized solar cell coated with a thin film of graphene in order to allow rain to produce electricity.
Graphene is a two-dimensional form of carbon consisting of atoms attached into a honeycomb arrangement. Its unusual electronic properties allow it to conduct electricity and bind positively charged ions with its electrons in an aqueous solution.
Using graphene electrodes, the team was able to harness power from the impact of raindrops. Since raindrops are not pure water, containing positively charged ions such as sodium and calcium, graphene can be used to attract these ions to its surface.
Once the raindrops make contact with the graphene, the water absorbs positive ions and the graphene gains delocalized electrons, creating a double layer of electronics and positively charged ions. Using the difference in potential created by this phenomenon - also referred to as a pseudocapacitor - the graphene-lined solar cells can create a voltage and current.
Despite the promise of the findings, the current technology only converts approximately 6.5 percent of the energy that it obtains, making it much less efficient than the 22 percent converted using the world's best solar panels. However, if the team is able to bump this number up, they will open up a new realm of solar power that harnesses the energy of rain and overcomes the biggest roadblock faced by the industry.
Although the new solar panel technology is still in its proof-of-concept phase and needs further work before it hits large-scale productions, the team hopes that their work will lay the foundation for future solar cells that possess all-weather technology, pushing the influence of global renewable energy.
The findings were published in the March 21 issue of Angewandte Chemie.
