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Metamaterials are a new class of artificial substances with properties unlike anything found in the natural world. Some have been designed to act as invisibility cloaks; others as superlenses, antenna systems or highly sensitive detectors. Now, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found a way to use metamaterials to absorb a wide range of light with extremely high efficiency, which they say could lead to a new generation of solar cells or optical sensors.

(PhysOrg.com) -- In the effort to convert sunlight into electricity, photovoltaic solar cells that use conductive organic polymers for light absorption and conversion have shown great potential. Organic polymers can be produced in high volumes at low cost, resulting in photovoltaic devices that are cheap, lightweight and flexible.

Instead of installing solar panels on your roof--how about just giving your house a new paint job? Of course you’d have to be sure to use solar paint. That’s what a group of Notre Dame researchers has created, detailing the recipe in the journal ACS Nano .

Most photovoltaic solar cells have an inherent efficiency cap, limiting how much useful energy they can extract from the sun. But scientists are finding ways around this obstacle with new research that could make solar energy more efficient and more cost-effective

The efficiency of conventional solar cells could be significantly increased, according to new research on the mechanisms of solar energy conversion led by chemist Xiaoyang Zhu at The University of Texas at Austin.

The efficiency of conventional solar cells could be significantly increased, according to new research on the mechanisms of solar energy conversion led by chemist Xiaoyang Zhu at The University of Texas at Austin.

Some solar devices, like calculators, only need a small panel of solar cells to function. But supplying enough power to meet all our daily needs would require enormous solar panels. And solar-powered energy collected by panels made of silicon, a semiconductor material, is limited -- contemporary panel technology can only convert approximately seven percent of optical solar waves into electric current.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Converting sunlight into electricity is not economically attractive because of the high cost of solar cells, but a recent, purely optical approach to improving luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) may ease the problem, according to researchers at Argonne National Laboratories and Penn State.

(PhysOrg.com) -- For years, scientists have dealt with the problem of trying to increase the efficiency and drive down the cost of solar cells. Now researchers have hit upon a new idea—trying to give the light collected by solar cells a bit of 'amnesia.'

If solar cells could generate higher voltages when sunlight falls on them, they'd produce more electrical power more efficiently. For over half a century scientists have known that ferroelectrics, materials whose atomic structure allows them to have an overall electrical polarization, can develop very high photovoltages under illumination

Now panels can be made lightweight, cheaply, and cleanly.

A bold new design for thin film solar cells that requires significantly less silicon – and may boost their efficiency – is the result of an industry/academia collaboration between Oerlikon Solar in Switzerland and the Institute of Physics' photovoltaic group at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

A new advance in solar cells that tips the surface with minuscule cone structures could neutralize manufacturing defects, boosting efficiency up to 80 percent. In conventional solar panels, more than 50 percent of the charges generated by sunlight are lost due to defects, said Jun Xu, a researcher at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The irregularities in the formation of the crystalline structure of solar cells can trap electrons and limit the transfer of sunlight to electrical energy.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.--Flexible solar cells now power communications equipment used by U.S. Marines fighting in Afghanistan's Helmand Province, enabling them to shed 315 kilograms worth of batteries while on foot patrol. But an F-16 fighter jet flying over Miramar training base in California burns 105 liters of jet fuel a minute with its afterburners engaged whereas the C-17 cargo consumes 11,350 liters an hour