Harvesting hot electrons could break solar panel barrier

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Add as preferred source The visual abstract showing how two synergetic effects create a delay in the loss of energy from hot electrons: 1) The Hot Phonon Bottleneck 2) Band-filling, resulting in the Burstein–Moss effect. Credit: ACS Energy Letters (2026). DOI: 10.1021/acsenergylett.6c00547 Physics predicts that no more than 33% of the solar energy that falls on a solar panel can be converted into electricity. However, experiments and simulations by scientists at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands revealed a way to harvest extra energy from "hot electrons," which could break this barrier. Their research is published in the journal ACS Energy Letters .