solar cell costs
Currently, most solar technologies are delivered through silicon crystals, the nature of highly refined and relatively few components make expensive solar process. This makes the final product, equally costly, and cost is one of the factors limiting the use of solar panels to generate energy.
Plastics, or polymers, solar cells are relative newcomers to solar technology, but its potential benefits – lower cost, less weight and greater flexibility – the promise of sweeping the solar industry, once the shopping and manufacturing are refined.
Polymers are plastic-type substances, usually from petroleum. Of organic plastics, typically represented by tree products such as amber and shellac (or SAP), which soon may be available from cellulose, or food products like corn, so the organic polymer solar technology not only economic, but the environment, ie disposable.
Konarka Technologies, Inc., recently announced that its flagship product, the plastic force ®, was qualified with 6 percent efficiency. This may not seem like much, but the solar panels currently used rarely have more than 12 – to 14 percent efficiency, and technology polymer cell is still in its infancy.
For Konarka to reach 6 percent with its promoter based organic photovoltaic (PV) solar is really an important milestone, as co-flexible Dr. Alan Heeger, University of California (Santa Barbara) notes.
"This progress gives us confidence that we are in a road to vision technology for high efficiency solar cells on low cost plastic. "
Heeger's founders, one of the co-of Konarka, received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000. He and his colleagues at UCSB is currently focusing on issues related to the electronic structure of polymers fundamentals of solar cells and expects in the near future to dump the efficiency rating to 10 percent complete, which would be highly competitive silicon-based solar.
Another discovery, the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, which promises improved polymeric materials by substituting solar silicon atom (or a lens) by a carbon atom in the backbone of the polymer. Finally, says UCLA researcher and co-author Hsiang-Yu Chen, solar cells can be as thin as paper, attachable to any surface and color to match different applications.
Imagine hanging from a solar panel next to your deck or patio that looks like a Van Gogh!
CEATEC 2009: Dye Sensitized Solar Cell
