Solar paint is inefficient but simple to make

January 4, 2012
solarpaint

Solar paint (credit: Matthew P. Genovese, Ian V. Lightcap, and Prashant V. Kamat)

Notre Dame researchers have developed a simple, cheap alternative to traditional solar cells: solar paint, IEEE Spectrum Energywise reports.

The paint, made with semiconducting nanoparticles, achieved a one percent conversion rate when tested using artificial sunlight. This is far behind other solar technologies — which fall in the 10 to 15 percent range, generally — but the ease of manufacturing and use are clear advantages.

Ref.: Matthew P. Genovese, Ian V. Lightcap, and Prashant V. Kamat, Sun-Believable Solar Paint. A Transformative One-Step Approach for Designing Nanocrystalline Solar Cells, ACS Nano, 2011 [DOI: 10.1021/nn204381g]