Solar material can “self-heal” imperfections
27. 1. 2021 | University of York | www.york.ac.uk
A material that can be used in technologies such as solar power has been found to self-heal, a new study shows.
The findings—from the University of York—raise the prospect that it may be possible to engineer high-performance self-healing materials which could reduce costs and improve scalability, researchers say. The substance, called antimony selenide (Sb2Se3), is a solar absorber material that can be used for turning light energy into electricity.
The process by which this semi-conducting material self-heals is rather like how a salamander is able to re-grow limbs when one is severed. Antimony selenide repairs broken bonds created when it is cleaved by forming new ones. This ability is as unusual in the materials world as it is in the animal kingdom and has important implications for applications of these materials in optoelectronics and photochemistry.
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