Thanks to progress in the work of nanotechnology, solar
panels can now be available to many more families who want to maximize the
energy of sunlight to convert it into electrical energy.
Recall that so far have been constructed with silicon solar
cells, and are modified with chemicals by what is called a process of doping
and generates the driving force necessary to extract energy from them.
Everything indicated that this process could not stand any
kind of material, but researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and
the University of California, have made a remarkable discovery which would
enhance the efficiency of photovoltaics by allowing the use of virtually any
material semiconductor as metal oxides, sulfides, phosphides, which are abundant
and are so much cheaper.
This has been achieved by applying an electric field instead
of chemistry. The approach is not new, but until now the existing electrode
designs were inconsistent with the photocells.
“Graphene was the inspiration,” explains one of the leaders
of the project, Will Regan. Graphene is a highly conductive material,
comprising a sheet of carbon with a single atom thick and can be influenced
with the game of electric fields. Thus, scientists have described two ways of
constructing the electrodes, one with and one graphene itself with very narrow
nanowires.
