NEWARK, N.J., July 20 (UPI) -- Researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology have developed a new flexible plastic solar panel that is inexpensive and easy to manufacture.
NJIT officials say the inexpensive solar cell can be painted or printed on flexible plastic sheets.
"The process is simple," lead researcher and author Somenath Mitra, professor and acting chair of NJIT's department of chemistry and environmental sciences, said in a statement. "Someday homeowners will even be able to print sheets of these solar cells with inexpensive home-based inkjet printers. Consumers can then slap the finished product on a wall, roof or billboard to create their own power stations."
The solar cell developed at NJIT uses a carbon nanotubes complex, which is a molecular configuration of carbon in a cylindrical shape. Scientists estimate nanotubes to be 50,000 times smaller than a human hair. Officials say just one nanotube can conduct current better than any conventional electrical wire.
Mitra and his research team took the carbon nanotubes and combined them with tiny carbon buckyballs, or fullerenes, to form snake-like structures. Buckyballs trap electrons, although they can't make electrons flow. Add sunlight to excite the polymers, and the buckyballs will grab the electrons. Nanotubes, behaving like copper wires, will then be able to make the electrons or current flow.
