Researchers have spring up a clever way to turn unremarkable surface into solar panel : Just cover them in a flexible film cover with spray - on solar cells .
“ My dream is that one day you ’ll have two technicians with Ghostbusters knapsack do to your sign and spray your roof,”University of Toronto ’s Illan Kramersays in anews release . And it ’s not just for the roof of your house . Spray - on solar work for surfaces tramp from patio furniture to car top of the inning and airplane wing . You might even be capable to utilise it to power your tablet .
Kramer and co-worker explicate the “ sprayLD ” organisation using lilliputian light - sensitive materials called colloidal quantum dots ( CQDs ) . Once they ’re printed onto a flexible motion-picture show or bendy plastic , these miniscule solar - sore dots can be used to coat various airfoil . A machine roof wrapped with CQD - coated film can convince enough energy to power three 100 - watt visible light bulbs or 24 compendious fluorescents .
The name sprayLD is a shimmer on ALD , oratomic layer deposition , a manufacture method acting where material are laid down in single one - atom - thick layer at a fourth dimension . Until now , CQDs were only incorporated into surfaces through a dull , expensive procedure call batch processing , which works like an assembly - line for chemical program . Instead , with sprayLD , liquidness turn back CQDs is blasted onto flexible control surface straight off — like print the news onto rolls of paper . equate with the meeting place - line approach , the roll - to - bowl coating method simplifies the incorporation of solar cells into existing manufacture processes .
Additionally , sprayLD was build using tinny , readily usable parts . The spray nozzle was sourced from steel mills , and Kramer bought some air brushes from an art store . “ This is something you could build in a Junkyard Wars fashion , which is basically how we did it,”Kramer enjoin . “ We think of this as a no - via media solution for shift from muckle processing to roll - to - roll . ”
The surface sprayed with CQDs do as well as their batch - march counterparts , with no major loss in solar conversion efficiency . accord to Gizmag , the squad was capable to attain an efficiency of 7.2 percent .
The work was published in three papers in the journalsAdvanced Materials , Applied Physical Letters , andACS Nano . you may determine sprayLD at work in this video recording :
