In the deep winter of 2018, in a darkroom of a certain laboratory at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, researcher Zhou Mingzhe's 17th attempt to start over from scratch in the perovskite battery experiment failed again. The problem lies in the xenon lamp solar simulator that has been in use for five years - spectral drift makes the test data as elusive as scattered sand, and the research over the past six months has been going around in circles. It was not until the following spring when he switched to the LED solar simulator of Saifan Optoelectronics that the light source, which stably reproduced the AM1.5G spectrum, enabled him to capture the abnormal response of perovskite films at a wavelength of 730nm for the first time. Eventually, he published a breakthrough achievement in ACS Nano.
This "standard light" that has changed the fate of scientific research is the result of Saifan Optoelectronics' decade-long technological breakthrough.
When the Laboratory Meets the "Ruler of Light"
At the morning meeting of the Photovoltaic Center of Tsinghua University, doctoral students are always discussing the "micron-level light control" of the Saifan simulator. It can precisely focus the light spot to 50μm, which is equivalent to half the diameter of a human hair, allowing researchers to clearly observe the movement of photogenerated carriers at the grain boundaries of photovoltaic materials. This kind of precision is a luxury on traditional equipment - a certain team once tested the same batch of perovskite cells with xenon lamp equipment, and the efficiency data deviation was as high as ±1.2%. It was not until they switched to Saifan equipment that they found the problem did not lie in the material but in the light source itself.
What moves the researchers even more is its "long-term commitment". The 100,000-hour lifespan of the LED light source means that one device can accompany the entire doctoral research career. Records from a laboratory of a certain university show that after continuous operation for 8,000 hours, the spectral matching degree of the Saifan simulator remained at 0.92, while the xenon lamp equipment of the same period had already replaced the light source three times, with a total of 47 hours of downtime for maintenance.
The "Light effect Referee" of the production line
In the intelligent manufacturing workshop of a photovoltaic enterprise in Jiangsu Province, a detection matrix composed of 30 Saifan simulators is working at a rate of one piece per second. They are like strict judges, scoring each battery cell with a test accuracy of ±0.3%. Wang Haitao, the production director, did the math: After introducing this system, the rate of A-grade products increased by 2.3%. Calculated at an annual production capacity of 10GW, it is equivalent to creating an additional profit of 46 million yuan.
The "hot temper" of traditional equipment once caused great headaches for production lines. A certain enterprise once had the inspection of 2,000 battery cells interrupted due to the sudden extinguishing of xenon lamps, resulting in rework losses of over 800,000 yuan. The "zero-fault operation" record of the Saifan simulator lasts for 146 days. With a low-power design of 650W, it can save enterprises 280,000 yuan in electricity fees every year.
"Replication of Light Environments from Deserts to Space
At the photovoltaic demonstration base in Golmud, Qinghai Province, the Saifan portable simulator is working under the cold wind of minus 15 degrees Celsius. It can simulate the intensity of sunlight at an altitude of 3,000 meters, helping engineers calibrate the power generation prediction model of the power station. In the vacuum chamber of Beijing Aerospace City, another Saifan device is simulating the AM0 space spectrum to conduct extreme environment tests on the flexible solar cells of the Chang 'e probe.
This "all-scenario adaptability" stems from the unique modular design. For photocatalytic research, it can be equipped with a UV enhancement module. For agricultural research, it can simulate the spectral ratio in different seasons. A certain agricultural laboratory used it to study the growth pattern of tomatoes under blue light, and the harvest period was advanced by 12 days.
Today, this "standard light" from Beijing has illuminated laboratories and factories in 23 countries around the world. When the news came that the perovskite battery efficiency of Zhou Mingzhe's team had exceeded 31%, the R&D personnel of Saifan Optoelectronics were debugging the new generation of simulators - they wanted that beam of light to illuminate every step of the exploration of new energy more precisely.
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