Industrial Revolution 2

Technology Review:
The first prototype cell to use photonic crystals looks promising.

By Prachi Patel-Predd

Researchers at MIT have unveiled a new type of silicon solar cell that could be much more efficient and cost less than currently used solar cells. Materials science and engineering professor Lionel Kimerling and his colleagues presented results of the first device prototype at a recent meeting of the Materials Research Society in Boston.

The design combines a highly effective reflector on the back of a solar cell with an antireflective coating on the front. This helps trap red and near-infrared light, which can be used to make electricity, in the silicon. The research team is licensing similar technology to StarSolar, a startup in Cambridge, MA.

Here’s the rest of the article…

Tags: solar cell reflector, solar cells, solar thin-film, Star Solar, thin-film, thinfilm

This entry was posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 8:21 pm and is filed under Clean Energy, Emerging Technologies, Energy Sources, Solar Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.