[amor de cosmos]

Cleaner and greener cities with integrated transparent solar cells
High power conversion of new solar cells that are thin, flexible, and transparent makes them ideal for a wealth of new applications

Imagine buildings in which the windows allow the sun's light to enter, and at the same time capture the energy from the sun needed to meet all their energy needs. In this seemingly futuristic scenario, the windows become productive solar cells that help us decrease our reliance on fossil fuels and advance towards a greener and cleaner environment. In a recent study carried out at ICFO, researchers have fabricated an optimal organic solar cell with a high level of transparency and a high power conversion efficiency, a promising step forward towards affordable, clean, more widely utilized and urban integrated renewable energies. The results of this study have just been published in Nature Photonics.

Today's commercial solar panels are, for the most part, composed of wafer-based crystalline silicon solar cells which are quite efficient in converting solar radiation into electrical power (approximately 15% conversion efficiency), but with several important obstacles standing in the way of maximum exploitation. To begin, they must be precisely oriented to receive direct sunlight and even then are limited in their ability to absorb diffused light. In addition, they are heavy, opaque, and take up a great deal of space.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-cag102113.php