If the California Desert 9% of sunlight effectively converted into energy, enough to meet the demand for electricity in the United States. However, the current high cost of solar cell technology, large-scale commercial applications, efficiency is not high enough. At Northwestern University, a research team has developed a new oxide coating, can greatly improve the efficiency of mppt charge controller energy conversion. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences published a report on the study online, the report mainly on the electrode heterojunction organic solar cells, organic engineering.

   The conversion of solar energy technology breakthroughs global researchers and developers more likely to produce relatively inexpensive, can be manufactured, easy to use solar cells. This technique can not only greatly reduce the products of combustion - carbon dioxide greenhouse gases cause global warming, but also can greatly reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. The research team members from various universities and research institutes. New wind grid tie inverter energy conversion technology is gradually forming a solar cell made from organic raw materials like plastic is very attractive because these cells by a process similar to the printing of newspapers, from low-cost and rapid printed into.

   So far, the most successful plastic photocell is called heterojunction cells. This battery uses a semiconducting polymer (an electron donor) and the combination placed between two electrodes (an electronic receiver body), a transparent electrode (positive electrode is usually a mixture of indium oxide and tin), and a negative electrode , the use of materials are typically aluminum. When sunlight enters the transparent electrode is irradiated in a light absorbing polymeric coating on, current is formed to separate pairs of electrons, respectively, the flow of positive and negative two levels. If this process of charging the successful passage of contact between the active coating of the polymer, the process is the current (photocurrent) generated by the battery, and received by the two electrodes - This is a big challenge.

   The Northwestern researchers precipitation technique using a laser, the positive electrode coated with a thin layer of smooth nickel oxide layer. This material is an excellent conductor, the electronics can be obtained from irradiated cells, is equally important that this material can also be effective to prevent the electrons are misleading, the flow of the error electrode, if the flow of the positive electrode will cause a decline in energy conversion efficiency of the battery .

Compared with the earlier cathode coating, low price of nickel oxide coating of the Northwest Research Group, a balanced power and difficult to corrosion. Heterojunction cells, the Northwestern research team has battery voltage increased almost 40%, the energy conversion efficiency increased from about 3% to 4% to 5.2% to 5.6%. The research team is to further adjust the cathode coating technology, to improve its access to and prevent the efficiency of the electronic, and test activities on the ground floor, extending the technology to the production scale.