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April 26, 2019 Friday 03:42:39 PM IST

Caffeine to Boost Performance of Solar Cells

Caffeine is not only capable of being a nervous system stimulant but also capable of boosting the performance of solar cells, according to a new research report.

Scientists have found that caffeine can help mitigate the thermal instability and improve the efficiency of metal halide perovskite solar cells. The team of scientists from University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and Chinese firm Solargiga Energy were behind this path breaking discovery. Caffeine was added to perovskite layer in 40 solar cells and found that the efficiency of the cells improved in the conversion of light into energy. Infrared spectroscopy was used to determine the successful bonding with the compounds.

Researchers hope that considering the ability of caffeine to help perovskite achieve high crystallinity, good thermal stability and low defects, perovskite solar cells production can be scaled up.

Source: https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30173-4