Plastic Solar Cells For Portable Electronic Devices
Solarmer Energy Inc. is developing plastic solar cells for portable electronic devices that will incorporate technology invented at the University of Chicago.
The invention, a new semiconducting material called PTB1, converts sunlight into electricity.Inventors Luping Yu, Professor in Chemistry, and Yongye Liang, a Ph.D. student, both at the University of Chicago, and five co-authors describe the technical details of the technology in an online article published Dec. 18, 2008, in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
The active layer of PTB1 is a mere 100 nanometers thick, the width of approximately 1,000 atoms. Synthesizing even small amounts of the material is a time-consuming, multi-step process. An advantage of the Chicago technology is its simplicity. Silicon-based solar cells dominate the market today. Industry observers see a promising future for low-cost, flexible solar cells. If people can make them sufficiently efficient, they may be useful for all sorts of applications beyond just the traditional solar panels on your house rooftop.
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The invention, a new semiconducting material called PTB1, converts sunlight into electricity.Inventors Luping Yu, Professor in Chemistry, and Yongye Liang, a Ph.D. student, both at the University of Chicago, and five co-authors describe the technical details of the technology in an online article published Dec. 18, 2008, in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
The active layer of PTB1 is a mere 100 nanometers thick, the width of approximately 1,000 atoms. Synthesizing even small amounts of the material is a time-consuming, multi-step process. An advantage of the Chicago technology is its simplicity. Silicon-based solar cells dominate the market today. Industry observers see a promising future for low-cost, flexible solar cells. If people can make them sufficiently efficient, they may be useful for all sorts of applications beyond just the traditional solar panels on your house rooftop.
see more
Labels: electricity, solar
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