Scientists Just Broke the Solar Power Limit Everyone Thought Was Absolute

[NNadir]

25. As usual, the "percent talk" is taken completely out of context. From the full paper, to which I have access:

Notably, triplet yields of up to 200% have been reported in crystals and covalently conjugated dimers, (14−25) and integration of the SF materials onto solar cell devices has been demonstrated to exceed 100% total exciton yield. (26−31) Another promising strategy to exploit the SF process is to convert the energy of separated triplets to photoluminescence (PL), thereby amplifying photons. (32) Triplet sensitization to emissive materials also improves the exciton generation efficiency of near-infrared (NIR) light-emitting diodes, (33) highlighting the broad potential applications of SF in optoelectronic fields.

This is in the first paragraphs of the paper and it refers to exciton yield. It's excitons, not thermodynamic energy recovery.

On inspection, while this claim will produce oodles of wishful thinking, the issue will do absolutely zero to address the environmental, economic and practical limitations of this technology, even if were entirely possible to industrialize this benchtop work.

These are land use, material use, the well known but often ignored reality that energy demand and availability are not linked in technologies dependent on the weather and the time of day, etc.

Solar energy is not sustainable, no matter what chemistry and physics are involved.

Figure 4 in the full paper shows the (very scary) chemistry involved:



These structures are polyaromatic hydrocarbons, powerful carcinogens that are constituents of air pollution and other chemical pollutants associated with petroleum and coal. They are decidedly not synthetically accessible on an industrial scale I would think.

It's a little late for wishful thinking. Solar energy will never be as clean nor as sustainable as nuclear energy, not in this form, not in any form.

It's a fantasy that should be allowed to die a deserved death.