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Printable Liquid Solar Cells
Tiny solar nanocrystals developed at USC are so small that they can float in a liquid solution. Just four nanometers in size, you could print a solar cell onto a surface like printing a newspaper.
Liquid nanocrystal solar cells are cheaper to fabricate than available single-crystal silicon wafer solar cells but are not nearly as efficient at converting sunlight to electricity. Brutchey and Webber solved one of the key problems of liquid solar cells: how to create a stable liquid that also conducts electricity.
Brutchey and Webber discovered a synthetic ligand that not only works well at stabilizing nanocrystals, but actually builds tiny bridges connecting the nanocrystals to help transmit current.
With a relatively low-temperature process, the researchers' method also allows for the possibility that solar cells can be printed onto plastic instead of glass without any issues with melting – resulting in a flexible solar panel that can be shaped to fit anywhere.
Fans of sf great Larry Niven recall black power, a paint that can turn any surface into a solar power generator, from his 1995 short story The Woman in Del Rey Crater.
From USC.
Richard L. Brutchey, assistant professor of chemistry at the USC Dornsife College and USC postdoctoral researcher David H. Webber developed a new surface coating for the nanocrystals, which are made of the semiconductor cadmium selenide. Their research is featured as a "hot article" this month in the international journal for inorganic chemistry Dalton Transactions.
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