ZPEnergy.com - Proven: Graphene Makes Multiple Electrons From Light

From ieee-spectrum: Graphene could make super high conversion-efficiency photovoltaics

By Dexter Johnson

Researchers at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have for the first time observed and measured graphene converting a single photon into multiple electrons in a photovoltaic device. This work should buoy hopes that graphene can serve as a material for photovoltaics with very high energy-conversion efficiencies.

The discovery builds on work conducted last year by the Barcelona-based Institute of Photonic Science (ICFO). ICFO scientists were able to indirectly show that graphene is capable of converting one photon into multiple electrons.

In that research, the team excited the graphene by exposing it to photons of different energies (colors). They then used a pulse of terahertz radiation to measure the resulting hot-electron distribution. They determined that a higher photon energy (violet) resulted in higher numbers of hot electrons than a lower photon energy (infrared)...

More: https://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/green-tech/solar/graphene-gets-another-boost-in-high-conversion-efficiency-photovoltaics

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