#OrganicPhotovoltaics: the path to lightweight, flexible and transparent #SolarCells
Researchers at #HiroshimaUniversity are creating organic photovoltaics that are sustainable and offer many benefits over traditional #silicon-based solar panels.
"Itaru Osaka’s story with organic photovoltaics began as a PhD student working in the research group of Hideki Shirakawa at the University of Tsukuba in Japan. In the 1970s, Shirakawa, along with American scientists Alan Heeger and Alan MacDiarmid, found a way to make plastics that can conduct electricity — a discovery that won them the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000.
"These days Osaka has his own research group at Hiroshima University that is working with these ‘conjugated polymers’ to make carbon-based, ‘organic’ photovoltaic cells. In contrast to typical silicon-based cells, which are relatively bulky, heavy, rigid and opaque, the organic alternatives are flexible and transparent enough to be placed where existing cells cannot, such as on the walls of buildings, the glass of greenhouses and even on the sides of tents.
"Significantly, their fabrication is expected to be cheaper and consume less energy than silicon-based photovoltaics."
Read more:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d42473-022-00224-9
#SolarPunkSunday #SolarCells #SolarPower #SolarPunk #RenewableEnergy #RenewablesNow
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This is on an M1 Pro with 16GB RAM. Insane! 
