Theory meets practice – We’re heading back to HTW Berlin!
The HZB’s BIPV consultancy office (BAIP) is once again coordinating and delivering the lecture series “Building-Integrated Photovoltaics”.
How can solar panels be integrated into architecture in an aesthetically pleasing and efficient way? This is precisely what our colleagues Samira Aden, Thorsten Kühn and Niklas Albinius, together with Rutger Schlatmann, will be demonstrating to Master’s students in Renewable Energy at the Berlin University of Applied Sciences during the coming summer semester.
As a BIPV consulting office, our aim is to break down barriers and disseminate knowledge. For the second time, we are shaping the summer semester with our seminar ‘Building-Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV)’, enabling us to pass on our practical knowledge to the next generation of aspiring engineers.
Together with the students, we will delve deep into the world of solar building envelopes. In doing so, the students will work on construction project at the HZB and, in parallel with the actual planning, develop their own holistic BIPV concepts in their semester projects – ranging from technical yield simulation and building regulations checks to economic life-cycle analysis.
We are looking forward to a sunny summer semester!
- Perovskite triple-junction solar cells: Even more efficient with GO/SAM bilayersPerovskite semiconductors efficiently convert sunlight into electrical energy; they are also inexpensive and extremely lightweight. A team at HZB has developed a triple-junction solar cell comprising different perovskite semiconductors, with a novel bilayer of graphene oxide (GO) and a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) as the hole conductor. This bilayer significantly increases both efficiency and long-term stability. The efficiency of the novel perovskite triple-junction solar cell is 27.3% and shows hardly any decline even after more than 770 hours of operation. The study has been published in the renowned journal Joule.
- Perovskites: the future of PV? - The smarter-E PodcastPerovskites: The Race for the Future of PV?
- Magnetic imaging: Micro-flowers increase the local magnetic fieldMaterials with magnetic nanostructures have many potential applications such as in spintronics. To explore such materials, nanoscale magnetic-sensitive imaging techniques are very useful, but up to now only weak magnetic fields could be applied during the imaging process. Now an international collaboration led by Dr. Sergio Valencia, HZB, has developed an approach that overcomes this limitation. The team designed tiny magnetic flux concentrators (MFCs), into which the sample is placed. The geometry of the MFCs resembles a flower with a number of petals which focus the applied magnetic field into its center. This greatly expands the magnetic field range available during imaging, and so the range of magnetic systems that can be investigated. The micro-flowers, enhancing magnetic fields locally, can find application in different nanometric magnetic microscopy techniques.