September 27, 2012

Research yields promising breakthrough in solar cells based on nanocarbon




An exciting advance in solar cell technology developed at the University of Kansas has produced the world’s most efficient photovoltaic cells made from nanocarbons, materials that have the potential to dramatically drop the costs of PV technology in the future.

“We actually broke the all-carbon PV efficiency record,” said Shenqiang Ren, assistant professor of chemistry at KU, who spearheaded the research with colleagues from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Carbon nanotube-based solar cells, in the past, averaged less than 1 percent in efficiency.


journal reference (full text free): acs Nano >>