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nanotimes News in Brief

Carbon Nanotubes // Researchers Use Carbon Nanotubes to Make Solar Cells Affordable, Flexible

© Text: NWU R

esearchers from Northwestern University have developed a carbon-based material that could

revolutionize the way solar power is harvested. The new solar cell material – a transparent conductor made of carbon nanotubes – provides an alternative to current technology, which is mechanically brittle and reliant on a relatively rare mineral.

“If solar technology really becomes widespread, as everyone hopes it will, we will likely have a crisis in the supply of indium,” Hersam said. “There’s a great desire to identify materials – especially earth-abun- dant elements like carbon – that can take indium’s place in solar technology.”

Hersam and Marks’ team has created an alternative to indium tin oxide using single-walled carbon na- notubes, tiny, hollow cylinders of carbon just one nanometer in diameter.

The researchers have gone further to determine the type of nanotube that is most effective in transparent conductors. Nanotubes’ properties vary depending on their diameter and their chiral angle, the angle that describes the arrangement of carbon atoms along the length of the nanotube. These properties determine two types of nanotubes: metallic and

semiconducting.Metallic nanotubes, the researchers found, are 50 times more effective than semicon- ducting ones when used as transparent conductors in organic solar cells.

“We have now identified precisely the type of car- bon nanotube that should be used in this applica- tion,” Hersam said.

Because carbon nanotubes are flexible, as opposed to the brittle indium tin oxide, the researchers’ fin- dings could pave the way for many new applications in solar cells. For example, the military could incor- porate the flexible solar cells into tent material to provide solar power directly to soldiers in the field, or the cells could be integrated into clothing, back- packs, or purses for wearable electronics.

“With this mechanically flexible technology, it’s much easier to imagine integrating solar technology into everyday life, rather than carrying around a large, inflexible solar cell,” Hersam said.

Researchers are now examining other layers of the solar cell to explore also replacing these with carbon- based nanomaterials.

11-09 :: September 2011