Originally published January 17 2005
Material can harness radiant solar energy
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
University of Toronto researchers have developed a new material capable of harnessing 30% of the sun’s radiant energy, compared with the 6% that plastic solar cells can harness today. It could make digital cameras sensitive enough to work in the dark, and it could help in providing renewable energy. The material employs semiconductor crystals so small they remain suspended in common solvents and can be sprayed on a surface.
Imagine a home with "smart" walls responsive to the environment in the room, a digital camera sensitive enough to work in the dark, or clothing with the capacity to turn the sun's power into electrical energy.
Researchers at University of Toronto have invented an infrared-sensitive material that could shortly turn these possibilities into realities.
The particle is six nanometers -- billionths of a meter -- in diameter.
Such nanoparticles were suspended in a solvent and dried like paint to make a large-area device.
In a paper to be published on the Nature Materials website Jan. 9, senior author Professor Ted Sargent, Nortel Networks -- Canada Research Chair in Emerging Technologies at U of T's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and his team report on their achievement in tailoring matter to harvest the sun's invisible rays.
"We made particles from semiconductor crystals which were exactly two, three or four nanometres in size.
The nanoparticles were so small they remained dispersed in everyday solvents just like the particles in paint," explains Sargent.
Existing technology has given us solution-processible, light-sensitive materials that have made large, low-cost solar cells, displays, and sensors possible, but these materials have so far only worked in the visible light spectrum, says Sargent.
Flexible, roller-processed solar cells have the potential to harness the sun's power, but efficiency, flexibility and cost are going to determine how that potential becomes practice, says Josh Wolfe, Managing Partner and nanotechnology venture capital investor at Lux Capital in Manhattan.
The research was supported in part by the Government of Ontario through Materials and Manufacturing Ontario, a division of the Ontario Centres of Excellence; the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada through its Collaborative Research and Development Program; Nortel Networks; the Canada Foundation for Innovation; the Ontario Innovation Trust; the Canada Research Chairs Programme; and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship.
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