Solar power keeps getting more exciting, more accessible, and more affordable every day. The DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has reported that researchers from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California Berkeley have developed solar cells that can be created from from a wide variety of semiconductors, including metal oxides, sulfides and phosphides. Previously, those substances were considered unusable because of the difficulty in modifying their naturally occurring properties by chemical means.
The implications of creating solar cells from non-toxic and abundant materials are industry-changing because doing so would cause the expense and complications would plummet. Currently, common materials for solar cells are crystals of silicon, cadmium telluride, or copper indium gallium selenide.
Source: the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Image: njaj via Shutterstock
Chelsea is a former newspaper reporter who has spent the past few years teaching English in Poland, Finland and Japan. When she wasn't teaching or writing, Chelsea was traveling Europe and Asia, sampling spicy street food along the way.
