Researchers from Ohio State University have successfully combined a battery and a solar cell into one hybrid device, or the world's first solar battery.
Their work was published in the Oct. 3, 2014 issue of the journal Nature Communications.
A mesh solar panel was key to the innovation, which allows air to enter the battery, and a special process for transferring electrons between the solar panel and the battery electrode, according to an Ohio State University press release.
Inside the device, light and oxygen allowed different parts of the chemical reactions that charge the battery.
The university will license the solar battery, where it will help "tame" the coasts of renewable energy, according to Yiying Wu, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State.
"The state of the art is to use a solar panel to capture the light, and then use a cheap battery to store the energy," Wu said, according to the release. "We've integrated both functions into one device. Any time you can do that, you reduce cost."
He and his students believe the device brings down coasts by as much as 25 percent.
The new invention also solves a problem in solar energy efficiency, by getting rid of the loss of electricity that usually occurs when electrons have to travel between am external battery and a solar cell.
Usually only 80 percent of electrons that emerge from a solar cell make it into a battery, according to the release.
Around 100 percent of the electrons are saved when light is converted to electrons inside the battery.
Wu and doctoral student Xiaodi Ren created a high-efficiency air-powered battery that discharges by chemically reacting potassium with oxygen. In 2014, the design won the $100,000 clean energy prize from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2014. The researchers formed a technology spinoff called KAir Energy Systems, LLC to develop it, according to the release.
"Basically, it's a breathing battery," Wu said. "It breathes in air when it discharges, and breathes out when it charges."
Doctoral student Mingzhe Yu created a permeable mesh solar panel from itanium gauze, a flexible fabric upon which he grew vertical rods of titanium dioxide like blades of grass.
Usually, connecting a solar cell to a battery would also require the use of four electrodes. Their hybrid only uses three.
"Here's how the solar battery works: during charging, light hits the mesh solar panel and creates electrons. Inside the battery, electrons are involved in the chemical decomposition of lithium peroxide into lithium ions and oxygen," according to the release. "The oxygen is released into the air, and the lithium ions are stored in the battery as lithium metal after capturing the electrons."
Once the battery discharges, it consumes oxygen from the air to re-form the lithium peroxide, according to the release.
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