What products or applications could be created using solar cell ink?
Windows is an interesting application where the solar cell would need to be semi-transparent and still work like a solar cell. The inks could possibly enable that. But more generally, the inks have the potential to dramatically lower the cost of solar cell manufacturing. The general target is to lower the manufacturing costs of solar cells by a factor of 10. The inks have the potential to do that. Is the prospect of being able to paint solar cell inks onto a rooftop or building likely? There is no fundamental road block to being able to paint a solar cell. The solar cell itself consists of a few different layers of materials, and we’ve been focusing on the most important layer, which is the light-absorbing layer. But if one were to paint a complete solar cell, each material would require an ink. It should be possible to do this. Then, ultimately, the solar cell would need to function efficiently, which is the engineering challenge that we working on right now. How great is the potentia
