The dream of finally being able to generate your own electricity at a low cost may soon come true – with high tech paint.
U.S. scientists say they have made a major advance in renewable energy technology by inventing an inexpensive “solar paint” that can produce energy. A team of researchers at Notre Dame University says the paint may someday be applied to homes – which can turn your house into a massive solar-powered generator.
In a research project dubbed ‘Sun-Believable’, the scientists successfully uses semiconducting nanoparticles to produce energy from sunlight, a university release said Wednesday. “We want to do something transformative, and to move beyond current silicon-based solar technology,” chemistry Professor Prashant Kamat of the university’s Center for Nano Science and Technology said.
“So we incorporate power-producing nanoparticles, called quantum dots, into a spreadable compound, with that we made a one-coat solar paint that can be applied to any conductive surface without special equipment.” When the paint is brushed onto a conducting material and exposed to light, it creates electricity, the researchers said.
The paint is made from tiny particles of titanium dioxide coated with one of two cadmium-based substances, mixed with a water-alcohol mixture to create a paste.
“However, such technologies are still in its infancy, the best light-to-energy conversion efficiency we’ve reached so far is 1 percent, which is well behind the usual 10 to 15 percent efficiency of commercial silicon solar cells,” Kamat said. “But this paint can be made cheaply and in large quantities. If we can improve the efficiency somewhat, we may be able to make a real difference in meeting energy needs in the future.”
Kamat’s team is now working on boosting efficiency and stability of the substance, at which point commercial viability could be within reach and ‘each house producing their own electricity’ might not be that far-fetched of a notion.
Solar paint has many advantages to other solar architecture. Solar panels for instance, are sophisticated, expensive and require a lot of time to deploy; but the paint can be cheaply and easily applied to basically any surface, like a house’s roof, and start preparing it to generate electricity.
