Solar power plays a major role in efforts to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and address climate change. The Sun delivers an immense amount of energy to Earth every moment, yet modern solar cells capture only a small share of it. This limitation is due to a long-standing "physical ceiling" that has been difficult to overcome.
In research published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on March 25, scientists from Kyushu University in Japan, working with collaborators at Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU) Mainz in Germany, developed a new way to push past this barrier. They used a molybdenum-based metal complex known as a "spin-flip" emitter to capture extra energy generated through singlet fission (SF), often described as a "dream technology" for improving light conversion.
With this approach, the team achieved energy conversion efficiencies of around 130%, exceeding the traditional 100% limit and pointing toward more advanced solar technologies.
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