Thursday, August 13, 2009
Between the capablity of printing your own solar cells to produce energy and new storage methodologies like EESTORs Capacitor Batteries a new energy revolution is underway.
Although printing your own solar cells is still a few years off, the road ahead is bright.
In 2007 a lab in the New Jersey Institute of Technology came up with a process developed by Lead researcher Somenath Mitra and his team using organic compounds composed of Fullerenes (buckyballs) combined with single wall Carbon Nanotubes.
These nano tubes are 50,000 times smaller than a human hair and notably better conductors than conventional wires or copper. Flullerenes (buckyballs) are added to the nano tubes through a reaction in a microwave and form a bridge that allows electrons to flow into the tubes.
When added to special polymers they can be made into solar cell.
Basically how it works is the sunlight hits the polymers on the solar cell which excites them to produce electrons, the (buckyballs) snatch up the electrons and pass them to the nano tubes. The current then flows through the tubes to wires connected to the cell and out in the form of electricity.
Eventually we will be able to paint these nanotubes or inkjet print them on very thin sheets of a special polymer which could be put on almost any surface like the roof of your house, a car, walls, even windows, turning them into solar generators! Professor Mitra has described the process as “simple” saying “Developing organic solar cells from polymers” “is a cheap and potentially simpler alternative” to traditional silicon based solar cells.
This new polymer-based technology was featured as the June 21, 2007 cover story of the Journal of Materials Chemistry “Fullerene single wall carbon nanotube complex for polymer bulk heterojunction photovoltaic cells,”
Filed under: Industry News | Tagged: carbon buckyballs, carbon nanotube, eestor, inkjet, printable solar cell | Leave a comment »
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