After four years of experiments, a trio from the University of Alberta has designed a nanoparticle to absorb light and conduct electricity using abundant materials from Earth’s crust: phosphorus and zinc.
Jillian Buriak, a chemistry professor and senior research officer of the university’s National Institute for Nanotechnology, led a team comprising of post-doctoral fellows Erik Luber from the Faculty of Engineering and Hosnay Mobarok from the Faculty of Science.
“Half the world already lives off the grid, and with demand for electrical power expected to double by the year 2050, it is important that renewable energy sources like solar power are made more affordable by lowering the costs of manufacturing,” said Buriak.
Mobarok was responsible for discovering a way to dissolve the particles to form ink so that it can be used to literally paint or print solar panels. Luber tackled the task of making the material responsive to light.
What does this mean for the average consumer? “My goal is that a store like Ikea could sell rolls of these things with simple instructions and baggies of screws and do-dads and you could install them yourself,” explains Buriak.
Before then, the team is currently experimenting with the nanoparticles by spray-coating them onto large solar cells to test their efficiency. They have applied for a provisional patent and have secured funding to scale.
Photo credit: University of Alberta.