The solar nanocrystals are about four nanometers in size – meaning one could fit more than 250 billion on the head of a pin – and float them in a liquid solution, so “like you print a newspaper, you can print solar cells,” said Richard L. Brutchey, assistant professor of chemistry in USC Dornsife.
Brutchey and USC postdoctoral researcher David H. Webber developed a new surface coating for the nanocrystals, which are made of the semiconductor cadmium selenide. Their research is featured as a “hot article” in Dalton Transactions, an international journal for inorganic chemistry.
Liquid nanocrystal solar cells are cheaper to fabricate than available single-crystal silicon wafer solar cells but are not nearly as efficient at converting sunlight to electricity. Brutchey and Webber solved one of the key problems of liquid solar cells: how to create a stable liquid that also conducts electricity.
Source: Clean Technica (http://s.tt/1aiJT)
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