TIFR Hyderabad graduate develops solar energy charged batteries

Hyderabad: In a bid to decrease the dependence on fossil fuels to recharge the batteries, Amar Kumar, a graduate at the TN Narayanan’s lab in the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Hyderabad and his colleagues have assembled a compact lithium-ion battery with photosensitive materials that can be directly recharged with solar energy. According to […]

Hyderabad: In a bid to decrease the dependence on fossil fuels to recharge the batteries, Amar Kumar, a graduate at the TN Narayanan’s lab in the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Hyderabad and his colleagues have assembled a compact lithium-ion battery with photosensitive materials that can be directly recharged with solar energy.

According to the researchers, initial efforts to channel solar energy to recharge batteries employed the use of photovoltaic cells and batteries as separate entities. Solar energy is converted by the photovoltaic cells into electrical energy that is consequently stored as chemical energy in batteries. The energy stored in these batteries is then used to power the electronic devices.

“This relay of energy from one component to the other, for example, from the photovoltaic cell to the battery, leads to some loss in energy. To prevent energy loss, there is a shift towards exploring the use of photosensitive components inside a battery itself,” the researchers said on Thursday. There has been substantial progress in integrating photosensitive components within a battery resulting in the formation of more compact solar batteries, they said. Stating that though the design was improved, the researchers said the existing solar batteries still have some drawbacks.

In the study, Amar decided to explore new photosensitive materials which can also incorporate lithium and build a solar battery that will be leak-proof and operate efficiently in ambient conditions. Solar batteries which have two electrodes usually include a photosensitive dye in one of the electrodes physically mixed with a stabilising component which helps drive the flow of electrons through the battery. An electrode which is a physical mixture of two materials has limitations on optimal usage of the surface area of the electrode, they said.

To avoid this, researchers from the TN Narayanan’s group created a heterostructure of photosensitive MoS2 (molybdenum disulphide) and MoOx (molybdenum oxide) that functions as a single electrode. This electrode allows for more surface area to absorb solar energy. “While this solar battery achieves a higher interaction of photosensitive material with light, it is yet to achieve the generation of optimum levels of current to fully recharge a lithium-ion battery. With this goal in mind, the lab is exploring how such heterostructure electrodes can pave the way for addressing the challenges of present-day solar batteries,” they added.

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