Novel technique using graphene to create solar cells

The device combines low-cost organic (carbon-

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containing) materials with electrodes of graphene, a flexible, transparent material made from inexpensive and abundant carbon sources. This advance in solar technology was enabled by a novel method of depositing a one-atom-thick layer of graphene onto the solar cell—without damaging nearby sensitive organic materials. Until now, developers of transparent solar cells have typically relied on expensive, brittle electrodes that tend to crack when the device is flexed. The ability to use graphene instead is making possible truly flexible, low-cost, transparent solar cells that can turn virtually any surface into a source of electric power.

Photovoltaic solar cells made of organic compounds would offer a variety of advantages over today's inorganic silicon solar cells. They would be cheaper and easier to manufacture. They would be lightweight and flexible rather than heavy, rigid, and fragile, and so would be easier to transport, including to remote regions with no central power grid. And they could be transparent. Many organic materials absorb the ultraviolet and infrared components of sunlight but transmit the visible part that our eyes can detect. Organic solar cells could therefore be mounted on surfaces all around us and harvest energy without our noticing them.

Researchers have made significant advances over the past decade toward developing transparent organic solar cells. But they've encountered one persistent stumbling block: finding suitable materials for the electrodes that carry current out of the cell.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-technique-graphene-solar-cells.html#jCp