New cost-effective transparent solar developed by researchers
Windows may soon be joining roofs as a popular site for solar panel installation, thanks to the development of a new type of transparent solar panels. U.S. Department of Energy researchers at the Brookhaven National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory have recently created a transparent material that can be spread over large areas to absorb light and generate energy, making transparent solar panels and solar windows possible.
This new transparent solar material is made up of a blend of a semi-conducting polymer and fullerenes. When micrometer-sized water droplets flow across a layer of polymer-fullerene solution, they form large arrays that leave behind a hexagonal honeycomb pattern when the solvent has evaporated. The slower the solvent evaporates, the more tightly packed the honeycomb pattern. The resulting material is transparent because the polymer chains are relatively loosely packed in the middle of the hexagons and are only densely packed at its edges. The edges absorb lots of light, while the middles absorb little and remain transparent.
The resulting transparent solar panels are not the first ever to be created. Just in the last few months, both Ensol and New Energy announced the development of a transparent spray on solar film that could be used to create Solar Windows. However, the Brookhaven/ Los Alamos Lab's transparent solar panels are the first to be made up of polymers and fullerenes, a method of production that according to the researchers is more cost effective and could be produced on a much larger scale.
Lead scientist Mircea Cotlet called this new technology "pretty exciting" due to its enormous potential. She projects that a house made with solar panels installed on the roof and transparent solar panels for windows could cut energy costs tremendously.
