Researchers Discover a New Kind of Solar Panel That Can Be Painted On

Imagine if all you had to do was buy several cans of special paint, a ladder and some brushes, to turn your whole house into a solar electricity generating plant. That's just what researchers at the University of Notre Dame have in mind. They've created a type of paint that, as they describe in their paper published in the American Chemical Society journal, ACS NANO, can be applied in the conventional way, and works as a single, large size solar cell.

The technology is based on something called quantum dots, which are atomic sized particles that can be applied to virtually any surface and which then become capable of transferring electricity. In this case, they are made of titanium dioxide, which is coated with either cadmium sulfide or cadmium selenide which is suspended in an alcohol mixture to create a type of paste, that when exposed to light creates the movement of electrons, which is of course, electricity. The paste is then applied to a transparent conducting material, which controls the flow of the electricity generated. After that, all that would be needed is means for getting the power from the roof or walls to the electrical system inside the house or business.

In addition to being easy to apply, because the paste is easy to make in large quantities, the new kind of paint is expected to fall within the price range of the average consumer, which means, virtually every house and place of business could benefit from it in as little as a couple of years. The biggest hurdle of course is putting in place electronics to take advantage of the electricity produced, which, like all other solar cells, is DC current. Such conversation units typically run in the thousands of dollars, so new adopters will still have to fork over some initial cash to take advantage of the cost savings paint based solar cells could provide. Luckily, the new paint should fall within tax incentive programs offered by state and federal agencies that are already in place.

Currently, the paint is still in the testing phase, as the research team would like to make it a little more efficient and impervious to weather conditions before it's made available to the public. Also, the product, currently known as Sun-Believable, might incur a name change as well depending on the results of marketing research. After that it's a matter of building a supply chain, and building a factory to produce the final product.