4 minute read
Hello there… Marika Edoff Solar cells on the rise worldwide
Marika Edoff, Professor of Solid State Electronics and leader of a major EU research programme focusing on tandem solar cells.
What is the research group aiming to do?
“Silicon solar cells are the dominant technology today. It is fairly mature technology that has come far, achieving close to theoretical efficiency, so it is difficult to take that technology much further.
“If we want even cheaper solar energy in the future, we need to take a technological leap. Manufacturing silicon-based tandem solar cells with a layer of another material that absorbs some of the sunlight, is the most exciting area of solar cell research today. We are going to use the thin film material CIGS, which we have expertise in and have worked on for a long time.” What are the benefits of CIGS technology?
“The material can be manufactured to specialise in blue light, so it absorbs the blue light even better than silicon solar cells, which specialise in red light. It has been difficult to make it sufficiently efficient, but now there have been new breakthroughs in research, by mixing in silver and sulphur. With these two new materials we are able to achieve even greater efficiency.
“As CIGS solar cells have been industrialised and tested for a long time, there is a high level of confidence in the technology. This is important in view of the stability requirement. These are products that are designed to be guaranteed to last at least 25 years.” Is there a lot of interest in solar cells at the moment?
“Yes, we are seeing large-scale development of solar cells all over the world, it’s an explosive development. Solar cells now account for nearly six per cent of the world’s electricity production and will soon be as big as wind power, which is also growing rapidly. Nuclear power accounts for ten per cent of global electricity production but is not growing as fast, so solar will overtake nuclear in just a few years. This is a huge increase precisely because solar cells are so cost-effective.” How is the research at Uppsala University positioned internationally?
“We are well positioned and well known. Many are following what we are doing, which shows we are respected by researchers around the world. The use of silver was not our own discovery, that was researchers in the US. We then took it a step further and now there are many researchers experimenting with silver. We were also pioneers in using very thin layers in solar cells, and many others have started to do so too. You could say that we are leading the way when it comes to innovations. That is one of our strengths.”
/ ANNICA HULTH
SOLAR CELLS ON THE RISE WORLDWIDE
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES The study shows that parents from different socio-economic groups do not always have the same opportunities when chosing schools.
SOCIETY Parents with high levels of education and parents with Swedish names receive friendlier responses when they contact schools to get information when choosing schools. These are the findings of a study at the Department of Government.
In the study, 3,430 primary schools were contacted by email by a fictional parent wanting to know more about the school. The parent gave information about their name and profession. This is one of the largest discrimination experiments carried out in Sweden.
“Parents with high levels of education received friendlier and more welcoming responses. They were more often informed about available places and received more positive information about the school. The results show that parents from different socioeconomic groups do not have the same opportunities when choosing schools,” says Jonas Larsson Taghizadeh, researcher at the Department of Government.
“My study shows that there is socioeconomic discrimination in Swedish schools, with potentially major negative consequences both for individuals and for the ability of the school system to offer all children an equal education.”
Spruce trees took 10,000 years to come back after the Ice Age
BIOLOGY The spruce tree is Sweden's most dominant tree species and was common even before the last Ice Age. However, it took some time for it to re-establish itself after the Ice Age. A new study at the Department of Ecology and Genetics has shown that it took more than 10,000 years from when the first spruces reappeared in Sweden after the Ice Age until the species became widespread. The sluggish rate of dispersal has surprised the researchers because the spruce should have had good prospects of expanding its range.
New centre of competence in nuclear technology
PHYSICS Uppsala University is the host of a new centre of competence in nuclear technology. The centre will support the development of a knowledge-based strategy for the introduction of small modular reactors in Sweden. The new competence centre ANItA (Academic-Industrial Nuclear Technology Initiative to Achieve a Future Sustainable Energy Supply) will bring together a large part of Sweden's industrial and academic nuclear expertise. The coordinator is Ane Håkansson, professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Uppsala University.
SOCIETY Professor Robert Goodin of the Australian National University has been awarded the 2022 Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science for a number of works over several decades in which he “with acuity and success endeavoured to blend political philosophy with empirical political science to increase the understanding of how decent and dignified societies can be shaped.” The prize, including prize money of SEK 500,000, is awarded by the Skytte Foundation at Uppsala University, which is celebrating its 400th anniversary in 2022.
