Friday, 02 November 2012 20:34

Stanford scientist develop solar cells made completely of carbon

Written by

Reading time is around minutes.
MonocrystallineSolarPanel

Once again it comes to carbon nanotubes and this time we find it combined with graphene [something we expect to see in CPUs soon –Ed]. Scientists have created a solar cell designed like sandwich in which the electrodes are made of graphene (a special honeycomb structure of carbon atoms just one atom thick) and carbon nanotubes. Between the electrodes there is special photoactive layer. This photoactive layer is composed of carbon molecules one nanometer in diameter. Otherwise, these molecules form a soccer ball called "buckyballs." The end result is that the whole solar cell made from carbon.

These cells, if they enter into commercial production, would be much cheaper to produce than conventional cells using materials such as indium and silver which is commonly used for many other purposes and are not exactly abundant, unlike carbon. However, all is not quite so perfect. Stanford solar cells absorb wavelengths of light primarily the near-infrared spectrum. This makes their performance less than 1%, which is much less than conventional cells. However, they hope that with better materials and techniques they can significantly raise efficiency.
carbonsolar
Study senior author, Zhenan Bao said “We clearly have a long way to go on efficiency, but with better materials and better processing techniques, we expect that the efficiency will go up quite dramatically.” He also mentioned “Materials made of carbon are very robust. They remain stable in air temperatures of nearly 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit.” This property will surely have a huge impact on the production and usage, as it will more than likely replace all the current devices used in extreme conditions. All they have to do now is get them to work efficiently.

What do you think about emerging solar cell technology? Tell us in our Forum

Read 2578 times Last modified on Friday, 02 November 2012 20:41

Leave a comment

Make sure you enter all the required information, indicated by an asterisk (*). HTML code is not allowed.