Quantum Times

Graphene organic photovoltaics, or, will joggers' t-shirts someday power their cell phones?

A flexible, printable material 4-or-fewer-atoms-thick may be a high road to economical and convenient electrical power from the sunA University of Southern California team has produced flexible transparent carbon atom films that the researchers say have great potential for a new breed of solar cells."Organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells have been proposed as a means to achieve low cost energy due to their ease of manufacture, light weight, and compatibility with flexible substrates," wrote Chongwu Zhou, a professor of electrical engineering in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, in a paper recently published in the journal ACS Nano.The technique described in the article describes progress toward a novel OPV cell design that has significant advantages, particularly in the area of physical flexibility.A critical aspect of any OPV photo-electronic device is a transparent conductive electrode through which light can couple with active materials to create electricity. The new work indicates that graphene,

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