양자 요동을 활용하면 더 효율적인 태양광 패널을 만들 수 있을까?

If scientists are correct, the world may be on the verge of a climate crisis.  With that being the case, something must be done sooner rather than later to address the issue.  For many, the low-hanging fruit to battling climate change remains a transition away from our reliance on fossil fuels as a source of energy towards more sustainable options like hydro, wind, geothermal, and solar.  However, for this to truly occur, a concerted effort must be made to advance the technology behind these alternatives.  Thankfully, researchers are hard at work already, with multiple recent studies pointing to a bright future for photovoltaic cells, which make solar energy harvesting possible.

보우타이 레조네이터

One of these aforementioned studies has successfully outlined a future in which, through reliance on quantum fluctuations, ‘bowtie resonators’ can potentially self-manufacture.

Bowtie resonators are a type of structure set to be used within next-gen photovoltaic cells, built with the goal of trapping light within an enclosed void.  The purpose of this is to maximize the contact time between the trapped light and whatever medium is being used to transfer/capture energy.  Interestingly, bowtie resonators are named as such due to their shape resembling that of a bowtie.

Typically, in the absence of leakage, the smaller the resonator, the more effective it is at trapping light – leading to higher efficiency and energy capture.  Unfortunately, we have reached a point in time where traditional manufacturing techniques have almost been maximized.  This is where the study comes in, which looked to leverage quantum fluctuations that result in the fundamental forces known as the,

• 카시미르 효과
• 반데르발스 힘

The purpose of this was to essentially guide the self-manufacturing of a resonator far smaller than is currently possible at scale.  The result was a significant and successful advancement in semiconductor device manufacturing, as the team was able to leverage the Casimir-van der Waals forces for ‘deterministic self-assembly’ of suspended silicon nanostructures and the successful creation of a nanoscopic resonator void.
Simply put – rather than attempting to build a resonator at such a small scale, the team built two halves and relied on quantum fluctuations to ‘fuse’ them together when placed in extremely close proximity to one another.  The paper indicates that “By contrast, planar semiconductor technology has had an immense technological impact, owing to its inherent scalability, yet it seems unable to reach the atomic dimensions enabled by self-assembly.”

이것이 의미하는 바는

The implications of this technology are far-reaching, with potential applications across various fields. The paper elaborates on this, stating the following.

우리의 연구는 몇 나노미터 이하의 구속을 가진 광공명 공동의 자기 조립을 보여주지만, 우리의 방법은 고체 상태 나노포어 시퀀싱, 나노갭 양자 터널링 전극, 혹은 초고품질 섀도우 마스크와 같은 초전도 양자 전자 장치 등에 적용될 수 있는 훨씬 더 넓은 연구 및 기술 분야에 활용될 수 있습니다.

보다 일반적으로, 우리의 연구는 원자 규모에서 광학, 전자공학 및 역학의 새로운 영역을 탐구할 수 있는 전망을 열어주며, 동시에 대규모 칩 구조와의 확장 가능하고 자체 정렬된 통합을 가능하게 합니다.

The self-assembled waveguide-coupled cavity is particularly interesting with regard to enhanced light-matter interaction, potentially enabling the operation of devices at single-photon levels and facilitating new levels of efficiency not yet seen in photovoltaic cells.

백컨택트 태양광 전지

Notably, this is not the only potentially game-changing advancement in recent weeks surrounding photovoltaic cells.  Researchers at the University of Ottawa (U of O) successfully manufactured the “…first back-contact micrometric photovoltaic cells’.

출처: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666386423005325?via%3Dihub#abs0015