Forget about sci-fi movies, the technology of the future is already here! Transparent solar cell may seem like a thing futurists or authors only imagine about, but scientists from Michigan State University have come up with a functioning product. Of course, solar cells are not new, but with the transparent function, the applications can multiply by the dozens! For instance, any window or a smartphone’s screen could theoretically be turned into a photovoltaic solar cell, providing with energy every time it faces the Sun. Amazing! Sure, the product is not yet ready for commercial applications, so clients can’t get the fully transparent solar cell to use at an affordable cost. But the academic researchers from the US are confident this will happen pretty soon, and the technology will be available in few years on large scale.

“These results open the potential for visibly transparent polymer solar cells as add-on components of portable electronics, smart windows and building-integrated photovoltaics and in other applications,” said study leader Yang Yang, a UCLA professor of materials science and engineering, who also is director of the Nano Renewable Energy Center at California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI).

Read more at UCLA, or hit up the research paper DOI: 10.1021/nn3029327 [paywalled]

A transparent luminescent solar concentrator that selectively harvests NIR photons is demonstrated. On page 606, R. R. Lunt and co-workers describe the photophysical and electronic properties of the luminophores, the impact of ligandhost control, and the optimization of the solar concentrator architectures to realize their potential for use in electronic displays, solar windows, and other glazing systems with high defect tolerances and processability…