Nanotube Advance for Plastic Solar Cells March 18, 2014
Posted by stuffilikenet in Awesome, Geek Stuff, Science.trackback
a team of physicists and chemists at Umeå University have joined forces to produce nano-engineered carbon nanotubes networks with novel properties; specifically, engineered into complex network architectures, and with controlled nano-scale dimensions inside a polymer matrix. “These networks increase the conductivity of a polymer composite by as much as eight orders of magnitude compared to a traditional random network.”
You can see where this is going, right? Plastic solar cells (lighter and cheaper by far than silicon cells) are already a reality, but they perform poorly in carrying their generated charges to any collection point. With a 100,000,000x improvement on plain ole’ nanotubes, the charge-transport issue may be no issue at all.
Homework:
“Nano-Engineering of SWNT Networks for Enhanced Charge Transport at Ultralow Nanotube Loading.” David R. BarberoNicolas Boulanger, Madeleine Ramstedt and Junchun Yu
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201305843
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