Researchers are a step closer to developing an energy-generating film that could turn clothes, handbags and backpacks into power chargers.
The University of Washington team has developed a manufacturing technique that produces a thin film of organic solar cells cheaply and easily.
The aim of innovators is to create cells from low-cost plastics that can transform at least 10 percent of the sunlight that they absorb into a usable electrical current.
However, developers have struggled to transform carbon-based materials into nanoscale (thinner than two-millionths of an inch) and maintain their efficiency of converting light into electricity.
Now a research team headed by David Ginger at the University of Washington has found a way to make images of tiny bubbles and channels, roughly 10,000 times smaller than a human hair, inside plastic solar cells.
These air pockets and grooves form within the polymers as they are being created in a baking process, called annealing, that is used to improve the materials' performance.
The researchers are able to measure directly how much current each tiny bubble and channel carries, thus developing an understanding of exactly how a solar cell converts light into electricity. Ginger believes that will lead to a better understanding of which materials created under which conditions are most likely to meet the 10 percent efficiency goal.
As researchers approach that threshold, nanostructured plastic solar cells could be put into use on a broad scale, he said. As a start, they could be incorporated into clothes, handbags or backpacks to charge mobile phones or mp3 players, but eventually they could make an important contribution to the electrical power supply.
Post a comment