"A new method for transferring energy from organic to inorganic
semiconductors could boost the efficiency of widely used inorganic solar
cells.
The key to making a better solar cell is to be able to extract the
electrons from these dark triplet excitons Maxim Tabachnyk
Researchers have developed a new method for harvesting the energy carried
by particles known as ‘dark’ spin-triplet excitons with close to 100%
efficiency, clearing the way for hybrid solar cells which could far surpass
current efficiency limits.
The team, from the University of Cambridge, have successfully harvested the
energy of triplet excitons, an excited electron state whose energy in
harvested in solar cells, and transferred it from organic to inorganic
semiconductors. To date, this type of energy transfer had only been shown
for spin-singlet excitons. The results
<http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat4093.html> are
published in the journal *Nature Materials*.