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Capturing new colours

25th October 2008

“Solid-state solar panels are going the way of the dodo”

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Researchers have developed a new kind of solar cell that can use all the colours of the rainbow, potentially a significant step forward in the evolution of solar technology. Until now, solar-powered systems have used only a small fraction of the spectrum.

The new photovoltaic material, described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this month, is made of a hybrid plastic that would be potentially much cheaper and easier to process than traditional solar materials, which use crystalline silicon, a commodity that has skyrocketed in price from $25 to $400 a kilogram since 2005.

This is just one of a number of innovations that solar researchers have come up with in the past few years to overcome the increasing price of silicon.

Other developments include solar panels that use lenses and mirrors to concentrate sunlight on a smaller area of silicon and materials that contain no silicon whatsoever.

“Solid-state solar panels are going the way of the dodo,” says Malcolm Chisholm of Ohio State University, the leader of the study.

There are already lightweight and flexible solar materials on the market, manufactured by such American companies as Nanosolar and Konarka, which can be cheaply printed off a roll like newsprint and are easily adapted to any surface.

Other researchers are working on using other parts of the light spectrum.

The University of Toronto’s Edward Sargent, for example, is working on solar cells that use infrared light. His cells are 10,000 times more efficient than when first described three years ago.

“But photovoltaics have to reduce cost and increase performance to see a widespread impact,” Prof. Sargent says. “Much progress remains to be made.”

Published in The Green Report in The Globe and Mail

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• Tags:
• Energy
• Research
• Solar Energy
• Solar Panels
• Technology
• Thin Film Solar Panels

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