New Solar Cell is 98% Plastic and Catches a Record-Breaking 96%
of Incident Light The Return of the Hairy Solar Panel The big
brains at the California Institute of Technology (every time I
hear about Caltech I think of Richard Feynman...) have figured
out a way to create solar panels that have at least three very
desirable characteristics: 1) They are very good at absorbing
light, 2) they are mostly made of cheap plastic and only use a
very small amount of expensive semiconductors, and 3) they are
flexible. How do they do that? At the microscopic scale, the
surface of the solar cells resemble the "hairy" nanowire-based
solar panels that we've covered in the past, except that instead
of making the wires with exotic materials like "indium gallium
phosphide", they make them mostly out of plastic with a bit of
silicon (2% silicon, 98% is polymer). This structure is very
good at absorbing light (it has a huge surface area to catch
photons): "These solar cells have, for the first time, surpassed
the conventional li