Huge Research Database For Solar Cells

Data science is currently one of the pillars of modern science. Where large amounts of data can be gathered together in organized information bases, enabling scientists to extract unique information that was not previously possible to obtain, and this information opens the door to more scientific exploration. Not only that, but that data can be passed to smart algorithms that can suggest the best scientific directions for the future. Applying this model to perovskite solar cells could lead to leaps in efficiency and stability as well as ease of fabrication.

In mid-December, important research was published in the famous journal Nature Energy, dealing with the launch of a database for one of the rapidly developing fields of solar cells called "perovskite solar cells". The research caused a stir in the scientific community related to energy fields, especially energy generated from Solar cells, and a number of senior researchers celebrated the research to the extent that the same journal (Nature Energy), which is one of the best research journals in the field of energy globally, published another article to clarify the importance of this database and its impact on the development of this important field in the future... The story of this research? Why is it important research?

In 1839, in the Russian Alps, German mineralogist Gustav Rose discovered a new type of crystal in the Earth's crust, which was named perovskite, after Lev Perovsky, who was interested in minerals and funded several scientific expeditions.

In the 1950s, some American scientists discovered the distinct photoelectric properties of these crystals; It emits an electric current when exposed to light, and it is easy to prepare, simple in chemical composition, and low in price, and it consists of widely available materials, and despite these discoveries and during the following decades, no one noticed the potential of this type of material until the year 2009 , when the Japanese scientist Tsutomu Miyasaka used for the first time perovskite in the installation of solar cells with an efficiency of only 3.8%, but Professor Henry Snaith - from Oxford University - quickly caught this old new material and developed it as a light-absorbing material inside solar cells, where its function lies - something From simplification - in absorbing sunlight and producing electrons that are transformed into an electric current outside the solar cell.

Since then, a frantic research race has been launched among scientists to develop this new type of solar cell, raise its efficiency, facilitate manufacturing methods and extend its life, and after nearly ten years of intensive work, the efficiency of the best cell made of perovskite reached 25.5%, which is a very large value, compared to the time period It is sufficient to know that the silicon cells that are prevalent today in the solar cell market took about half a century of research and development to achieve the same leap in efficiency.

Why did perovskite materials attract scientists' interest in this way? The reason is due to the properties of these semi-conductors of electric current. The atomic and molecular structure of perovskite materials can be engineered to absorb a certain part of sunlight with high efficiency. For example, the metal atom in the center of the crystal can be changed to tin instead of lead, and the halogen element centered at The ends of the crystal from chlorine to bromine or even to iodine, and this change in the atomic structure of the material changes its absorption of sunlight in quantity and quality, and thus changes the efficiency of the solar cell built on it, and these crystals can be deposited from a solution, and therefore do not need any purification or preparation As expensive as silicone, it can also be mass-produced in a very short time and at low costs using printing techniques on glass or bendable plastics. Perovskites appear in other electronics and energy-related applications, such as high-resolution displays, supercapacitors, and micro-sensors.

Over the past decade, perovskite materials have established themselves as one of the next-generation solar cell technologies, but the road to market is not strewn with roses. Perovskite solar cells still have a short lifespan compared to silicon cells; At their best, perovskite cells only live for five years compared to twenty years for silicon cells. The challenges for perovskites do not stop at age, but extend to environmental impact and sustainability, as their highly efficient cells contain lead in their molecular structure, which represents a major environmental barrier to production. However, recently, scientists began to focus on developing cells based on tin instead of lead, as tin is a safe alternative to the environment, but its efficiency is still less than 15%.

This unprecedented research performance was accompanied by a very large rise in the rate of scientific publication, reaching more than three thousand research annually. This is an astonishing number and it is impossible for any researcher or scientist to read, follow up or analyze this large number of researches. Because the rate of information flow is very large and exceeds the capacity of any researcher, as a result, some scientific gaps have arisen in the field. There are some research points that have been covered extensively and focus on them, while there are other important points that did not receive the required research attention. Moreover, if a new researcher wants To start in this field, he has to read about twenty thousand scientific papers published so far, which is impossible.

This scientific challenge prompted researchers Eva Unger and Jesper Jacobson - from the Helmholtz Institute for Materials and Energy Research in Germany - to think of creating an open-source global database, the goal of which is to collect all available data on every solar cell published in this field over the past ten years. To achieve this ambitious goal, a large number of lectures and presentations were organized in a number of the world's best research groups in the field of solar cells and related materials, in order to persuade the largest possible number of young researchers to join this project and to help extract data accurately from all published research and organize it accurately in A well-controlled database made available free of charge to all researchers worldwide, and nearly eighty researchers have already joined the project.

From the end of 2019 to mid-2020, researchers read more than 20 thousand published scientific papers and extracted about 100 information about 42,200 solar cells that were published until the end of the study, which puts us in front of millions of accurate scientific information contained in this rare base. This information base also represents A rich and open source for all information published in this important and accelerating field. In fact, grouping that information together graphically enables researchers to extract information that was previously impossible to obtain. For example, we find below a graph showing the most important chemical compositions that researchers relied on to prepare perovskite solar cells, the number of cells published each year, and the relative efficiency of each type compared to the other. This graph was drawn from more than 20 thousand scientific papers, which was impossible in Last before setting said database.

The Perovskite Solar Cell Database is designed to be completely open source, which means that the code as well as the fully collected data will be available to everyone, and it will also be open to modification, addition and continuous updating of everything that is published in this accelerating field, this feature - open source - will make From this information base a source of inspiration for scientists of similar disciplines such as supercapacitors, batteries, etc.; It is now possible to easily design a similar information base, start assembling an army of young researchers, collect data and build one base after another in multiple fields, which will have a very big impact on the acceleration of scientific discoveries and scientific and knowledge development in highly vital fields such as energy.

The impact of the database extends beyond the realm of perovskite into the realm of machine learning and artificial intelligence; Researchers in these fields are working on programming algorithms that analyze the available information, and then predict the best chemical combinations that achieve the highest efficiency, or determine the best architecture for building solar cells in order to achieve the lowest cost and easiest way to manufacture, which makes the path to the future very clear to researchers. And the greater the amount of information available to feed these algorithms, the more efficient and accurate they are in predicting future trends in this field, and thus this rule represents a valuable treasure for machine learning and artificial intelligence scientists.

This information treasure prompted Professor Marina Light - from the University of California, Davis - to write an article in the same journal about the importance of the study, titled "Informational earthquake in the field of solar cells." One of the publications on specialized scientific media such as Research Gate, as some described this rule on Wikipedia, perovskite cells.

The echoes of this research work and its repercussions in the field of solar cells were very great, and most researchers expect that this rare information base will contribute to facilitating and accelerating the efforts of scientists in order to reach the maximum utilization of perovskite materials, which leads to raising its efficiency to more than 30% and its life Over twenty years, in that case perovskite cells would spread rapidly, dominate the PV market, and we would find them all around us, not just on rooftops, but as cells embedded in window panes, cars, and phones, but also on the roofs of vehicles and trains, and perhaps even On the wings of light aircraft to increase its range and reduce fuel consumption, and this positive impact is expected to extend to the environment, as the consumption of fossil fuels and the amounts of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere will decrease, and thus contribute to reducing the greenhouse effect.

This research work - with its scientific importance and with all its complexities - draws attention to the importance of research cooperation and networking efforts between scientific institutions and research groups to achieve scientific achievements that could not have been achieved except through research cooperation. We look forward to seeing such research projects between Arab universities and research institutes in the future. We do not lack capabilities or brains; Two Arab scientific institutions participated in this study: the Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute and King Abdullah University in Saudi Arabia. Two Arab researchers, one Egyptian and one Palestinian, also participated in the study.