Solar Breakthrough: Better Crystals, "Oven-Baked" and Painted On
by Alex Pasternack, New York, NY 
on 06. 3.08
Barring huge subsidies, bringing solar energy to the masses -- from your home to your cell phone -- requires a major drop in the cost of the technology. Treehugger has reported on many advances. Last week, a group of researchers in Australia and China announced they had moved one step closer to the "holy grail of cost-effective solar energy."
According to Professor Max Lu of the University of Queensland, Australia, the team has grown "the world's first titanium oxide single crystals with large amounts of reactive surfaces, something that was predicted as almost impossible." Here's the deal: titanium oxide -- a plentiful, renewable and non-toxic mineral often found in white paint -- is known for its ability to absorb UV light and produce electrons that can break down compounds on its surface. That makes it useful in self-cleaning windows and "pollution-eating" concrete. It can also be used in low-cost and low-efficiency solar cells, also known as Gratzel cells. Up until now, the challenge, tackled by coating titanium oxide in dyeshas been to make the stuff efficient over a large surface area, so the material can both absorb ample light and conduct electricity well. But growing more reactive titanium oxide cells could indeed be a breakthrough. Says Lu:
“The beauty of our technique is that it is very simple and cheap to make such materials at mild conditions. Now that the research has elucidated the conditions required, the method is like cooking in an oven and the crystals can be applied like paints.”
The researchers also say the technology could be used to split hydrogen from water to create energy and to decontaminate water. While it may be a decade before the technology can be used in solar cells, says Lu, the decontaminating applications may be five years away.
Similar research into low-cost disruptive solar technologies last year -- at the NJ Institute of Technology, at Massey University, and especially at the University of Notre Dame -- also relies on nanostructures to create high efficiency solar cells. Using a readily available compound like titanium oxide instead of silicon in solar cells may not only prove cheaper and more efficient, but, potentially much more sustainable too.
What is also worth noting is the origin of some of this research: China. Cheap solar wouldn't just help bring down pollution over some of the world's most polluted cities, but would help bolster China's determination to leapfrog the US and Europe in sustainable technologies, in a kind of green tech war that can only help everyone.
via UQ and Chemistry World
Also on TH:
Doubling the Efficiency of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells
Dyesol: Titanium Solar Cell
1GW of Solar by 2017 Says Carbon Trust
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Is anyone else tired of reading news about "breakthroughs" in solar tech., but not actually seeing much reduction in the cost or efficiency of solar panels?
Isn't "thin film" solar (the technology used by companies like First Solar), already on the way to profitability without subsidies?
wow!
This has been in the pipe line since 2005, why is it so slow? Why must we wait so long for prototypes to become manufactured. Compare this to computer technology which appears in the shops six months after the first demo.
What do you mean by "Using an organic compound like titanium oxide..."? Titanium oxide is not an "organic compound" using the strict definition (meaning that the compound contains carbon). Do you mean titanium dioxide is somehow "certified organic" or something like that?
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Alex responds:
You're right Marcus -- that was an error, in the process of describing how it is easier to synthesize these crystals than silicon. I meant to write "readily available," and have updated the post as such.
thanks.
I agree!
I'm tired of reading about one solar breakthrough after another that promise more affordable solar in the future.
I want to read about affordable panels I can put on my roof and pay for out of pocket and realize the savings sooner than 15-20 years.
Look, you need to just accept that it'll be a while before solar is that cheap. But 15-20 years to see payback? Maybe if you live in the arctic. But it should be much, much less if you have decent sunlight in your area; if not, consider options other than solar.
I am also curious about the comment on subsidies...are there no in-production solar technologies that are profitable when installed at a consumer level? I thought thin film had finally broken this barrier...?
To answer some of the questions about cost and length of time to market:
New technologies like this have about a 10 year adoption cycle, due to nothing more than the fact that older technologies are still generating revenue so adoption of new tech is slowed so we can squeeze every drop of money out of each advance (to justify the investment in researching it in the first place).
Also there's the other end with client-side adoption lag. Consumers won't invest in brand new technologies until their sufficiently market-proven.
Cost comes down with scale, and scale depends on timing the market. Every new tech will have its day, just have to wait, or start your own research and tech company and have prototypes made for yourself. :P.
Solar tech won't become widely adopted until we have long-range wireless electricity transmission (through electromagnetic resonance induction) and waaaay more efficient regenerative fuel cells.
Can't wait till they can just spray the solar gel onto a surface, shine a UV light on it to separate a protective polymer layer, and BOOM!...buildings and cars that generate vast amounts of cheap, clean power.
mike wrote:
New technologies like this have about a 10 year adoption cycle, due to nothing more than the fact that older technologies are still generating revenue so adoption of new tech is slowed so we can squeeze every drop of money out of each advance
But if a company that isn't in the solar biz develops a better mousetrap it has every incentive to jump in and steal marketshare. And even a company in the biz might decide to obsolete its current processes for increased future profits.
Presumably the problem is the cost and time to ramp up large-scale production of the new untested technology. Lab researchers don't have $50M to do this; existing solar companies are making decent money and figure they can wait-and-see since if the technology proves itself they can buy or license it; and despite the increase in venture capital for alternative energy, it's still a tenth ot what's required to fund every possible breakthrough (also, once a VC has invested in a few technologies, it has an incentive to see the others fail).
That's why government funding is so important. We need every promising advance hustled into large-scale production as soon as possible.
Mike also hallucinated: Solar tech won't become widely adopted until we have long-range wireless electricity transmission (through electromagnetic resonance induction) and waaaay more efficient regenerative fuel cells.
None of that's necessary. When solar gets so cheap you can quickly (five years?) recoup the installation cost selling electricity to the power company, its use will obviously explode. But again, until a new technology can meet all the demand, its manufacturers have no incentive to price it way below competing technologies.
(My PV panels cost $10,000+ and generate a few dollars of electricity a day.)