Transparent, color solar cells fuse energy, beauty

Mar 04, 2014 by Nicole Casal Moore
Jae Yong Lee, Electrical Engineering PhD Student, tests a colored solar cell. Credit: Joseph Xu, Michigan Engineering Communications & Marketing



"I think this offers a very different way of utilizing solar technology rather than concentrating it in a small area," he said. "Today, solar panels are black and the only place you can put them on a building is the rooftop. And the rooftop of a typical high-rise is so tiny.




"All the red stripes, the blue background and so on—they are all working ," Guo said.


The researchers are working to improve their numbers with new materials, but there will always be a tradeoff between beauty and utility in this case. Traditional black solar cells absorb all wavelengths of visible light. Guo's cells are designed to transmit, or—in other versions—reflect certain colors, so by nature they're kicking energy from those wavelengths back out to our eyes rather than converting it to electricity.

Unlike other color solar cells, Guo's don't rely on dyes or microstructures that can blur the image behind them. The cells are mechanically structured to transmit certain light wavelengths. To get different colors, they varied the thickness of the semiconductor layer of in the cells. The blue regions are six nanometers thick while the red is 31 (the team also made green, but that color isn't in the flag).


One of these so-called charge transport layers is made of an organic material. This hybrid structure, a combination of both organic and inorganic components, lets the researchers make cells that are 10 times thinner than traditional amorphous . The organic layer replaces a thick 'doped' region that would typically controls the flow of electricity.


The cells' hues don't change based on viewing angle, which is important for several reasons. It means manufacturers could lock in color for precise pictures or patterns. It's also a sign that the devices are soaking up the same amount of light regardless of where the sun is in the sky. Conventional pivot across the day to track rays.

"Solar energy is essentially inexhaustible, and it's the only energy source that can sustain us long-term," Guo said. "We have to figure out how to use as much of it as we can."

Explore further: New research could lead to less expensive solar panels

More information: "Decorative power generating panels creating angle insensitive transmissive colors." Jae Yong Lee, Kyu-Tae Lee, Sungyong Seo, L. Jay Guo. Scientific Reports 4, Article number: 4192 DOI: 10.1038/srep04192. Received 14 January 2014 Accepted 30 January 2014 Published 28 February 2014

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