New research sheds light on the efficacy of solar panels, and indicates that we may soon be able to get more bang for our buck when it comes to solar energy systems.

Explained in a recent issue of Accounts of Chemical Research, a team of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) researchers found a way for nanocrystals of certain semiconductor materials to generate more than one electron of energy after absorbing only one photon from the sun. This means that solar panels could potentially produce much more energy than they currently do, but still absorb the same amount of photons.

According to the LANL Web site, "when a conventional solar cell absorbs a photon of light, it frees an electron to generate an electrical current. Energy in excess of the amount needed to promote an electron into a conducting state is lost as heat to atomic vibrations (phonons) in the material lattice. Through carrier multiplication, excess energy can be transferred to another electron instead of the material lattice, freeing it to generate electrical current—thereby yielding a more efficient solar cell.”

“Researchers still have a lot of work to do,” said researcher Victor Klimov. “One important challenge is to figure out how to design a material in which the energetic cost to create an extra electron can approach the limit defined by a semiconductor band gap. Such a material could raise the fundamental power conversion limit of a solar cell from 31 percent to above 40 percent.”

Even a difference of 9 percent in increased efficiency could be enough to make solar power cost-competive with fossil fuel energy in many applications . The more energy and cost efficient solar panels become, the more renewable energy becomes increasingly reliable and widely used.