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Solar paint

Harvesting light

Nature Photonics volume 7, pages 425–426 (2013)Cite this article

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Organic photovoltaics offer the tantalizing promise of low-cost plastic coatings that can be applied to building surfaces and roofing to generate electricity sustainably. Now, the demonstration that the addition of organic dyes can improve device performance by energy-transfer processes offers an exciting new opportunity.

Many believe that global access to the low-cost generation of electricity is the key challenge of our time. Moreover, if climate change is to be addressed then such energy generation must be sustainable. Since their discovery in the mid-1980s, organic photovoltaics (OPVs) based on semiconducting polymers have generated considerable excitement as a potentially inexpensive means of generating electricity directly from sunlight1. Their key attraction is that they can be printed at high speeds onto large areas of thin, flexible plastic substrate using roll-to-roll processing techniques, thus creating the tantalizing prospect of being able to coat every roof and other suitable building surface with photovoltaic materials at extremely low cost. To date, however, the range of solar wavelengths that these devices can harvest has been restricted by the relatively narrow spectral absorbance of organic materials.

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  1. Paul C. Dastoor is in the Centre for Organic Electronics, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, New South Wales 2308, Australia,

    Paul C. Dastoor

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  1. Paul C. Dastoor
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Correspondence to Paul C. Dastoor.

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Dastoor, P. Harvesting light. Nature Photon 7, 425–426 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2013.130

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