Transparent solar cells? I’ll have some of that!
Some wonks at UCLA, the University of California at Los Angeles*, for the four of you who don’t know it, have created the world’s first visibly-transparent solar cells.
The polymer scientists have succeeded in bringing useful solar into transparent cells, a move that could transform not only mobile devices, but also help in reducing our energy footprint!
How?
Imagine, if you will, those rows of eyes disguised as skyscrapers in all metropolitan areas of the world – except, of course, Los Angeles!
If, just 50% of those windows are retrofitted with transparent solar cells, the energy consumption of those cities would drop precipitously, not only saving our planet, but reducing our dependency on oil from those sybaritic and despotic governments that sit on great reserves. Basically, we could tell those yo-yos to go drown in their friggin’ oil!
From their press release
Visibly transparent photovoltaic devices can open photovoltaic applications in many areas, such as building-integrated photovoltaics or integrated photovoltaic chargers for portable electronics. We demonstrate high-performance, visibly transparent polymer solar cells fabricated via solution processing. The photoactive layer of these visibly transparent polymer solar cells harvests solar energy from the near-infrared region while being less sensitive to visible photons. The top transparent electrode employs a highly transparent silver nanowire–metal oxide composite conducting film, which is coated through mild solution processes. With this combination, we have achieved 4% power-conversion efficiency for solution-processed and visibly transparent polymer solar cells. The optimized devices have a maximum transparency of 66% at 550 nm.
Small blurb here too
* UCLA, not only boasts of great academics, but is the campus of the University of California with the beautiful people of Los Angeles. Beauty makes studying easy. You can’t beat that!
© 2005-2012, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited
