New family of materials produces "twin" electrical
charges on single molecules, potentially paving the way for easy manufacture of
more efficient solar devices
One challenge in improving the efficiency of solar cells is
that some of the absorbed light energy is lost as heat. So scientists have been
looking to design materials that can convert more of that energy into useful
electricity. Now a team from the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven
National Laboratory and Columbia University has paired up polymers that recover
some of that lost energy by producing two electrical charge carriers per unit
of light instead of the usual one.