In this case, size doesn’t matter.  It really is knowing what to do with it that counts and in this case, clustering little balls of zinc oxide into larger balls popcorn style has made all the difference.

Solar energy research has been gaining momentum lately and new breakthroughs are happening monthly it seems.  Various forms of creating cheap solar panels, from using printers to using roll to roll processes to use plastic as a basis for solar collection, are being refined.  Since silicon is so expensive and the resulting solar panels not only expensive to purchase but also to install, cheaper easier solar panels are the goal of most solar development.  Unfortunately, dye based solar panels have half the capture rate of solar energy of silicon solar panels, until now.

The University of Washington announced that scientists in its materials science department had made a break through.  Previous experiments using first small balls of dye-sensitive cells and later larger balls of dye sensitive cells returned disappointing results.  Blending the two did not improve the outcome until the specific configuration of combining the small dye-sensitive balls in clusters similar to popcorn.  Once this configuration was tested, it resulted in a 258 % increase in efficiency.  That was using the easier to work with but less efficient zinc oxide. 

Researchers will begin using titanium oxide a more efficient, but less compliant material in tests to replicate the “popcorn” effect.  The prediction is that using titanium oxide with increase the efficiency significantly over the zinc oxide.  Since the process used to create dye-sensitive solar panels is so much cheaper than silicon and flexible panels, the increase in solar energy efficiency will make this form of solar collection affordable and accessible to more people.

With the innovations in solar technology occurring so quickly, it should not be long before everyone can afford solar in some form or another.  Using solar energy to power clothing, gadgets, cars, homes or offices, will greatly reduce our environmental impact.  And just think, we may owe it all to “blue popcorn”.

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Entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 9:42 pm under Science and technology, Technology.

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