SOLAR PANELS
Physicists predict significant growth for cadmium telluride photovoltaics
A team of scientists analyzes challenges and proposes corresponding research goals in new solar energy research published in the peer-reviewed journal Joule.
University of Toledo
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Dr. Michael Heben is a Distinguished University Professor and McMaster Chair and Director of the Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization.
view moreCredit: The University of Toledo
A solar energy generation technology once considered limited in its potential is poised for significant growth in the United States.
That’s the conclusion of a team of scientists who analyzed the outlook for cadmium telluride photovoltaics in research published in the peer-reviewed journal Joule.
University of Toledo physicists including Dr. Michael Heben, a Distinguished University Professor and McMaster Chair and Director of the Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization, collaborated with partners at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Laboratory of the Rockies, the Missouri University of Science and Technology, Colorado State University, Sivananthan Labs and First Solar under the umbrella of Department of Energy’s Cadmium Telluride Accelerator Consortium.
Their analysis presents challenges and corresponding research goals that the team of scientists believe will bring this technology to a manufacturing capacity of 100 gigawatts by 2030.
“There are a lot of advantages to cadmium telluride,” Heben said. “They perform better in hot and humid climates than the silicon photovoltaics that currently dominate the industry, and because their manufacturing process leverages domestic supply chains, they’re less sensitive to import restrictions while supporting national energy security.”
Cadmium telluride photovoltaics are a category of thin-film solar cells that have long shown promise as a reliable, low-cost and high-efficiency alternative to the crystalline silicon modules that currently dominate the global solar energy industry.
Cadmium telluride solar cells are the only other photovoltaics to be manufactured at the gigawatt scale, enjoying a particular niche in utility-scale deployment. But comparatively lower power conversion efficiencies and supply chain challenges have limited their share of the total solar power generation portfolio in the United States to approximately 16%.
UToledo is deeply engaged in the research and development of cadmium telluride solar cells through its Wright Center, where physicists’ groundbreaking work on this and other thin-film photovoltaic technologies in large part accounts for UToledo’s rank in the top quarter of global universities in materials science by U.S. News & World Report.
First Solar, the world’s largest manufacturer of cadmium telluride solar panels with a major presence in northwest Ohio, notably traces its roots to early work completed in campus labs in the 1980s.
The Joule research makes a case for significant growth potential in cadmium telluride photovoltaics, taking into account factors like economic policies favoring domestic manufacturing and technological advancements improving power conversion efficiency.
“Cadmium telluride has much more room to grow in performance compared to silicon,” Heben said. “The technology is very reliable and predictable, while the energy conversion efficiency is constantly moving upward.”
Scientists also address technological and supply chain advancements related to the element tellurium. They credit the technological advancements with enabling more efficient extraction and utilization of this mining byproduct, and they cite economic and industry data to demonstrate that its availability is not proving to be the limiting growth factor that manufacturers once predicted it would be.
It all adds up to a promising outlook for cadmium telluride photovoltaics.
“This research is essentially a roadmap for further growing and expanding this technology,” Heben said.
Journal
Joule
Article Title
Roadmap to 100 GWDC: Scientific and Supply Chain Challenges for CdTe Photovoltaics
Liverpool scientists discover graphene’s electronic properties in 3D material in boost for green computing
University of Liverpool
University of Liverpool researchers have discovered a way to host some of the most significant properties of graphene in a three‑dimensional (3D) material, potentially removing the hurdles for these properties to be used at scale in green computing.
Graphene is famous for being incredibly strong, lightweight, and an excellent conductor of electricity and its applications range from electronics to aerospace and medical technologies. However, its two-dimensional (2D) structure makes it mechanically fragile and limits its use in demanding environments and large-scale applications.
In a paper published today, a team of researchers have identified that 3D material, HfSn₂, mimics graphene’s fast, 2D electron flow. This ground-breaking discovery offers opportunities for designing materials that are more stable yet that still show advanced low‑energy electronic behaviour. Such materials are attractive for next‑generation, low‑energy logic and spintronic devices, which are central to future computing technologies.
The work was jointly led by Dr Jonathan Alaria (Physic), and Professor Matthew Rosseinsky OBE FRS, (Chemistry), highlighting the essential synergy between physics and chemistry that underpins this discovery. The team used a combination of theoretical modelling and experiments on high‑quality single crystals grown in the laboratory. Here researchers showed that HfSn₂ contains honeycomb layers arranged in three dimensions in a special chiral stacking pattern (similar to the twist in DNA). This arrangement preserves the unique electronic behaviour normally seen only in 2D materials.
These honeycomb layers also allow the material to host Weyl points - unusual points in the electronic structure that can dramatically enhance how easily electrons move. As a result, electrons in HfSn₂ act as if they are travelling in a 2D material, even though the structure itself is fully 3D.
The paper’s key finding is that the way electrons move in HfSn₂ can behave like a 2D system, even though the atoms form a strong 3D network. This means the electronic behaviour can be separated from the actual structure of the material. It also shows that 2D‑like performance is possible in materials that are much more robust than typical layered crystals.
The HfSn₂ study demonstrates how carefully controlling chemical bonding and stacking patterns in direct physical space can be used to tune electronic behaviour in energy–momentum space.
Dr Jonathan Alaria, Senior Lecturer in Physics at the University of Liverpool, said: “Our work shows that 2D‑like electronic transport can be realised within a fully 3D material. Demonstrating this required advanced physics experiments under extreme conditions, combined with close collaboration with our chemistry colleagues. This synergy was vital and we could only uncover these new concepts by uniting theoretical modelling, crystal growth and high‑field transport measurements.”
Professor Matt Rosseinsky concluded: “We asked ourselves, do materials need to be two‑dimensional to behave like graphene, or can we create graphene‑like properties in completely different kinds of materials with higher structural dimensions? These results show the power of chemistry to generate counter-intuitive properties by controlling the atomic arrangements that determine function and suggest there may be broader opportunities to generate two-dimensional high mobility for low-energy electronic devices beyond reliance on structurally layered materials.”
This research forms part of the EPSRC Programme Grant “Digital Navigation of Chemical Space for Function”, an £8.6 million initiative that aims to change how functional materials are discovered. By merging cutting-edge physical science with advanced computer science, including AI and machine learning, the project is developing digital tools and workflows that can identify entirely new classes of materials and evaluate their properties in the context of technological opportunities. The work was performed in collaboration with the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of Liverpool, the Max Planck Institute for the Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden, and the Academic Centre for Materials and Nanotechnology at AGH University of Krakow.
The paper, ‘Decoupling structural and electronic dimensionality: 2D transport in a 3D honeycomb chiral stacking’, will be published in Matter on Tuesday 27 January 2026, 11 AM EST (DOI: 10.1016/j.matt.2025.102578).
Journal
Matter
Article Title
Decoupling structural and electronic dimensionality: 2D transport in a 3D honeycomb chiral stacking
Article Publication Date
27-Jan-2026
Tiny gold spheres could improve solar energy harvesting
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This supraball (top) is 2100 nanometers in diameter and is made from hundreds of tiny gold nanoparticles (bottom) engineered to boost solar energy absorption.
view moreCredit: Adapted from ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 2026, DOI: 10.1021/acsami.5c23149
Sunbeams contain a lot of energy. But current technology for harvesting solar power doesn’t capture as much as it could. Now, in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, researchers report that gold nanospheres, named supraballs, can absorb nearly all wavelengths in sunlight — including some that traditional photovoltaic materials miss. Applying a layer of supraballs onto a commercially available electricity converter demonstrated that the technology nearly doubled solar energy absorption compared to traditional materials.
Scientists are exploring materials that absorb light across the solar spectrum to improve solar energy harvesting. Gold and silver nanoparticles (NPs) have been suggested as a solution because they’re easy and cost-effective to make, but current NPs’ light absorption is confined to visible wavelengths — a fraction of the full solar spectrum. To capture additional wavelengths, including near-infrared light, Jaewon Lee, Seungwoo Lee and Kyung Hun Rho propose using self-assembling gold supraballs. These structures consist of gold NPs that clump together and form tiny spheres. The diameter of the supraballs was adjusted to maximize the absorption of wavelengths present in sunlight.
The researchers first used computer simulations to optimize the design of individual supraballs and to predict the performance of supraball films. Results from the simulations showed that the supraballs should absorb more than 90% of wavelengths from sunlight.
Next, they created a film of gold supraballs by drying a liquid solution containing the structures on the surface of a commercially available thermoelectric generator (TEG), a device that converts light energy into electricity. The films were created in ambient room conditions — no clean rooms or extreme temperatures required.
In demonstrations with an LED solar simulator, the supraball-coated TEG had an average solar absorption of about 89%, nearly twice that of a TEG with a conventional film made from single gold NPs (45%).
“Our plasmonic supraballs offer a simple route to harvesting the full solar spectrum,” says Seungwoo Lee. “Ultimately, this coating technology could significantly lower the barrier for high-efficiency solar-thermal and photothermal systems in real-world energy applications.”
The authors acknowledge funding from the National Research Foundation of Korea, the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Institutional Program, the Korea-US Collaborative Research Fund, and a Korea University grant.
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Journal
ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
Article Title
“Plasmonic Supraballs for Scalable Broadband Solar Energy Harvesting”
Article Publication Date
25-Jan-2026
