Instead of installing solar panels on your roof—how about just giving your house a new paint job? Of course you’d have to be sure to use solar paint. That’s what a group of Notre Dame researchers has created, detailing the recipe in the journal ACS Nano. [Matthew P. Genovese, Ian V. Lightcap, and Prashant V. Kamat, "Sun-Believable Solar Paint. a Transformative One-Step Approach for Designing Nanocrystalline Solar Cells"]
The paint contains nanoparticles of titanium dioxide—which gives whiteness to sunscreen and powdered sugar. The particles are coated with semiconducting cadmium nanocrystals, and mixed with water and alcohol, to create a golden yellow paste. The researchers dubbed the product “Sunbelievable.” They brushed it onto a conductive glass electrode, and attached that to a counter-electrode, to create a complete circuit.
When they shined light on the tiny solar cell, it pumped out a small current. The efficiency of the light-to-electricity conversion was only about one percent—much lower than the 10 to 15 percent efficiency of conventional silicon cells.
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But the researchers say this paint is relatively cheap, can be made in any color, and doesn’t require a clean room to manufacture, like silicon cells—just a bench top. If they can up the efficiency a bit, a future Tom Sawyer could make an electric fence.
—Christopher Intagliata
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
