Nanotube Advance for Plastic Solar Cells

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