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The First Entirely All-Carbon Solar Cell

Zhenan Bao, Stanford University Professor of Chemical Engineering, and her colleagues have developed the first solar cell made entirely of carbon - a promising alternative to the expensive materials used in photovoltaic devices today. The thin-film prototype is made of carbon materials that can be coated from solution - a technique that has the potential to reduce manufacturing costs. "Every component in our solar cell, from top to bottom, is made of carbon materials," says Stanford graduate student Michael Vosgueritchian. "Other groups have reported making all-carbon solar cells, but they were referring to just the active layer in the middle, not the electrodes." One drawback of the all-carbon prototype is that it primarily absorbs near-infrared wavelengths of light, contributing to a laboratory efficiency of less than 1 percent – much lower than commercially available solar cells.

Topics:
Coatings & Adhesives Electronic Components Electronics & Computers Energy Manufacturing & Prototyping Materials Nanotechnology Power Renewable Energy Semiconductors & ICs Solar Power

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    Transcript

    00:00:01 [Music] Stanford University the goal of this project uh was to develop carbon- based materials as transparent electrodes for solar cells uh the reason for that um is carbon based materials uh they're very abundant uh in nature and um they have extraordinary light absorption uh properties the electroic materials

    00:00:30 currently for solar cells are becoming more and more expensive so there's a great need to find replacement materials so that the cost for producing solar cells uh can be significantly lowered we started this program working with um carbon nanot tubes they have extraordinary conductivity and also at the same time uh they can be dispersed into Solutions so that we can uh

    00:00:58 potentially coat um the materials onto uh surfaces for example on the building uh windows or coated onto uh cars uh for uh generating uh electricity it's already uh possible uh with the uh research we have carried out so far to make solar cells uh with these materials but we still have uh a lot more research to do to get them to the uh performance level uh that's needed for practical

    00:01:30 applic appications for more please visit us at stanford.edu