Moon dust is quickly becoming a magical material, from which other elements such as oxygen and titanium can be extracted. These are extracted and formed bricks to build lunar shelters, or combined those bricks to “have a ring.” And now, scientists show how to turn lunar regoliths into solar cells.
“From extracting water for fuel to building a house with lunar bricks, scientists have discovered, from extracting water for the sake of fuel to building a house with lunar bricks. How to use moon dust“Felix Lang from the University of Potsdam in Germany statement. “Now we can turn it into solar cells, perhaps providing the future for energy. month The city will need it. ”
Traditional solar cells are incorporated Earth– The glass produced is relatively heavy and can increase the cost of firing. Therefore, manufacturing lunar solar cells from local materials is an attractive proposition.
To test the idea, Lang led a team experimenting with moon dust analogues. Samples of materials from the moon are scarce and valuable for scientists. So there is a cottage industry that takes the lead with NASA’s Simulant Development Laboratory to create different types of simulated erythema regoliths. (Regolith is a technical term for materials on the surface of the moon and is made up of fragments of dust and impact emissions).
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Lang’s group melted some of this simulated regolith to form “Moonglass.” This is a simple process that does not require difficult purification, and can be achieved simply by focusing the sunlight falling on the moon to achieve high temperatures.
Moonglass is then combined with perovskite. Perovskite is a crystal material commonly used in solar cells and works to absorb sunlight. Electronic With an atomic structure. The electrodes then attract these excitation electrons and create an electric current.
Team of scientists The origin of blueJeff Bezos’ aerospace company has previously I proposed a similar method Building solar cells on the moon.
Moonglass offers several advantages over regular glass made from terrestrial materials. In space, ordinary glass tends to be brown, which starts blocking some of the incoming sunlight, reducing the efficiency of solar cells. Moonglass already has a natural brown tint as a result of the impurities of regolith. It is also more resistant to radiation. Cosmic Ray Left, right and center flight.
The lack of Moonglass-based solar cells is its efficiency. Traditional solar cells used in space have an efficiency of 30% to 40%, that is, what percentage of incident sunlight they convert into electricity? Moonglass-based solar cells currently have only 10% efficiency, but Lang’s team believes that by removing some of the impurities in Moonglass, efficiency can be reached up to 23%.
However, even if they can’t, it’s not necessarily a problem that they are not efficient. “We don’t need super-efficient 30% solar cells. We just make more on the moon,” Lang said. Plus, there are benefits to making solar cells on the moon. Doing so reduces launch mass and costs from the Earth, saving 99% of the weight of material transport.
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There are still unanswered questions. Earth – Manufacturing solar cells from similar lunar dust with normal gravity is one thing. Lowering gravity is another thing, and low gravity can affect how well Moonglass forms. The solvent used to treat perovskites can deteriorate when exposed to vacuum conditions, but large temperature fluctuations between day and night can affect the stability of the solar cell as the material expands and shrinks.
To try to answer some of these uncertainties, Lang’s team argues a small mission to the moon to test solar cells in actual lunar conditions. Rewards are enormous when successful, providing power to the foundation of the moon and making long-term settlements more reasonable. Such a base can be placed in the Antarctic of the Moon, where there are plenty of water ice that are permanently hidden within the shadow craters. solar Constantly visible, avoiding two-week nights elsewhere on the moon, shortening solar-powered missions.
This study is explained in a paper published today (April 3) in Journal Devices.
