Carbon Nanotube Solar Cells On the Horizon 150
MikeChino writes Carbon nanotube news abounds as of late, and the next application for the up and coming material may be hyper-efficient and economical solar cells. Led by professor Paul McEuen, researchers at Cornell recently tested a simple solar cell (called a photodiode) crafted from a single carbon nanotube. Surprisingly, researchers discovered that more light shined on the nanotube created even more electricity, a huge difference from today's silicon solar cells where excess energy is lost in the form of heat rather than used to create more electricity."
Re:Yikes, what an article! (Score:1, Informative)
I agree, especially with the comment about excess light. Traditional solar cells do in fact produce more "electricity" or current, with higher intensity light. Second, a photodiode is a more complex structure than a solar cell in most cases, since a solar cell is just a P-N junction.
Re:Homer says... (Score:1, Informative)
Carbon nanotubes can't be mass produced economically.
Re:Again with the #$##%# solar cells (Score:3, Informative)
On the plus side, the cost of solar panel is expected to hit 1 dollar a watt by before the end of 2010, and as cheap as 50 cents a watt by the end of 2012.
Do you have a link on that?
If true, the only thing remaining would be to drop the ancillerary costs to a similar level. Right now that's running around $1/watt itself.
For example, a 6kw inverter [solarhome.org] runs $3.6k. That's $.50/watt right there, without getting into wiring, mounting costs for the panels, paying for the electrician to hook everything up*, etc...
*You can't count on everyone, or even a significant fraction of the population to be able to do this stuff themselves.
Re:The technology isn't important (Score:3, Informative)
You're kidding right?
For everyone who is looking for real solutions (unfortunately that's not quite everyone in the debate), the cost is a crucial factor in the equation. Economic efficiency is more important than energy efficiency.
Photoresistive, not photovoltaic (Score:3, Informative)
If you read TFA carefully it seems to be describing a PHOTORESISTOR, not a PHOTOVOLTAIC device.
They talk about APPLYING a potential difference across the thingy, and discovering it has a wide dynamic range OF RESISTANCE, not of any ability to generate voltage or current.
We don't need any more resistors, we have enough of them and they don't generate any power anyway.
This article is even more of a major fail than most.
Re:Photoresistive, not photovoltaic (Score:2, Informative)
If you read TFA carefully it seems to be describing a PHOTORESISTOR, not a PHOTOVOLTAIC device.
But they describe it as a photo-diode. I'm going to take a leap of faith here and assume they know the difference.
Oh, and here is a link to the original page [cornell.edu].