research
plastic power
Photovoltaic cells have traditionally been built using crystalline silicon, which requires expensive processing and results in rigid, bulky, inflexible solar panels. While costs for such panels have come down in recent years, the industry has been looking for a breakthrough that will enable solar power to be price-competitive with other forms of energy and more versatile in its applications.
Most solar cells currently in use are based on crystalline silicon or thin film technologies. The performance of solar cells is measured in terms of its efficiency at turning light into electricity. The efficiencies for crystalline silicon technologies have been around 15 percent; that is about one-sixth of the light striking the cell gets converted into electricity. The efficiencies for thin film technologies that are being manufactured today range from three to seven percent.
During my work I develop materials for light activated power plastic technology, which promise to enable a wide range of everyday objects to harvest energy from both sunlight and artificial light. This technology offers a potential low-cost roll-to-roll manufacturing technique and improvements in efficiency of these organic solar cells.
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